Corporate Public Relations

A New Historical Perspective

Marvin N. Olasky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136696572
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume presents a historical and objective overview of the field of public relations in the past century. It discusses some of the landmark cases in public relations, critiques the philosophies of innovators such as Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays, and explores how corporate public relations has affected economic and political trends. The author concludes by offering long-term alternatives for the future of public relations valuable to both practitioners and corporate executives.

CHAPTER ONE

Voluntarism and Restraint:
Early 19th-century
Public Relations

Few scholars have attempted to chart the 19th-century ancestors of 20th-century public relations. One of the best monographs, by Alan Raucher in 1958, noted three major antecedents: press agentry, advertising, and the early attempts of business reformers to place private corporations under some degree of public control.¹

Yet, to understand problems affecting the 20th-century occupation, we need to examine a fourth and neglected aspect of 19th-century public relations: the surge of nonprofessional, spontaneous public relations activity in the United States during the early 19th century.

One example of the difference between decentralized, voluntaristic 19th-century public relations, and the current professionalized model, was the handling of Lafayette’s visit to America in 1824 through 1825.

Lafayette, hero of the American Revolution a half century earlier, had both political disappointments and financial difficulties in France. His hope of American-style constitutional government in France was dashed with the reinstatement of the Bourbon monarchy following Napoleon’s final downfall. Financially, Lafayette had contributed much from his own pocket for the American Revolution and had then seen his ancestoral estates confiscated by the French revolutionary government. In the 1820s Lafayette was excluded from the Chamber of Deputies in France because of his opposition to Bourbon policies.²

Meanwhile, during the 1820s the United States was trying to remind itself of its revolutionary principles and was also trying to show the monarchies of Europe that this republican country had grown and come into its own. One of the frequent charges levelled by aristocrats against democracies was that “the mob” had no sense of history, no sense of gratitude to those who had served it, and no sense of the meaning of “virtue,” which implied self-sacrifice for the sake of honor.

With Lafayette in trouble and America needing an opportunity to do what was right — to show that a republic could have gratitude and could pass on its heritage to new generations — a unique public relations opportunity presented itself: Lafayette was invited to tour America half a century after the revolutionary triumphs and to see what men and God had wrought.

There was no central planning committee to make the arrangements. Each community invited Lafayette on its own and made preparations to receive him properly as he passed by on the grand tour scheduled by a personal secretary who traveled with the aged Lafayette and by the grand old man’s son, George Washington Lafayette. For instance, here is a report of public relations planning in Murfreesborough, North Carolina, as printed in the Norfolk and Portsmouth Herald of March 4, 1825:

On Friday the 25th about noon, we received information that Gen. Lafayette would probably pass through this place, on his way to Raleigh; and being anxious to show him every mark of respect and esteem in their power, the citizens assembled to make such arrangements for his reception and accommodation as the shortness of the notice would allow . . .³

The citizens formed three committees: one to meet Lafayette in Summer-ton, Virginia, and invite him to stop at Murfreesborough; one to arrange for his reception and provide housing; the third to choose a speaker who would make a formal address of welcome. Everything proceeded well. Lafayette was “escorted into town, where he was received under an ARCH, (erected for that purpose, which was handsomely illuminated, and decorated with evergreens).” A Mr. Thomas Maney made the welcoming speech, “Those of us who have risen up in another generation, behold in you the original of that picture of excellence which our fathers have impressed upon our hearts.”⁴

The townspeople of Fayetteville, North Carolina also met and voted to establish an invitation committee, an arrangements committee, and a banquet committee. Their invitation noted that Fayetteville had been the first town in America to be named after the revolutionary hero, and Lafayette said that of course he would come. At the banquet, a Judge Toomer gave Lafayette the public relations message, on behalf of the town committee: “We are plain republicans, and cannot greet you with the pomp common on such occasions. Instead of pageantry, we offer you cordiality,” and in this way show that “ingratitude is no longer the reproach of republics.”⁵

Similarly, the main speaker in Charleston, South Carolina contrasted professional public relations work in ancient Rome with his town’s volunteer efforts:

The triumphal entries of Pompey and of Caesar were but the adulations of a conquered city; followed by victims, gladiators, and spoils. But the voluntary burst of gratitude and admiration, which . . . a whole continent of freedom expresses for the friend of Washington and the rights of man, is without a parallel in the history of mankind.⁶

The fundraising aspects of public relations were also handled in unpaid but competent style. In Savannah, Georgia, members of a volunteer committee produced 500 copies of a brochure, which they sent out to solicit funds for a memorial to Revolutionary War generals Greene and Pulaski. The brochure summarized the “character and services” of the war heroes, then concluded:

We therefore invite our Fellow-Citizens throughout the state to cooperate with us in this work of duty, that the State of Georgia may give another example to the world that Republics are not unmindful of the obligations which they owe, both to the living and the dead.

The contributions came in on the basis of this frank appeal to a republic’s public relations: often the goal was to give an “example to the world.”

Not everything went smoothly. At Charleston, South Carolina, the limitations of even careful public relations planning became evident:

To Dr. James Davis and Professor Henry Nott had been assigned the duty of going about twenty paces in front of the procession to see the path clear and all in fitting order for the tread of the august personage [Lafayette] to follow. Some mischievous boy, at a cross street, threw in an old gander . . . To try to catch the goose was out of the question, as it, of course, would create confusion and unseemly mirth; so he walked, in solitary dignity, poking out his neck from side to side, stopping now and then to give a hiss at the men. The doctor and professor, hats in hand, [were] venturing a mild “shew! shew!” and giving a gentle flourish of their hats to accelerate his movements. The gander would give a “quack! quack!” in return, not improving his pace, but merely resuming the even tenor of his way, and so he led the van to the end of the line.⁸

Still, these were citizen public relations practitioners, and some problems were expected and accepted. In short, throughout the year of Lafayette’s American “pilgrimage of liberty,” arrangements were made, speeches were written, the press was used artfully, brochures were produced, funds were collected and distributed, public opinion was sounded, and “a good time was had by all,” without professional public relations counsel.

Less important events also brought forth the volunteer public relations committee. For instance, one flurry now forgotten by historians occurred in June, 1846, when the unpopular Pope Gregory XVI died at age 81. Americans had been reading how the prisons of the Papal States (consisting at that time of the province of Rome, the Romagne, Umbria, and the Marches) were overflowing with political prisoners, so there was rejoicing when the cardinals’ conclave selected Giovanni Mastai Ferretti, a young man with more democratic views, to be the next pope. Ferretti who took the name Pius XI, immediately abolished secret tribunals for political offenders and declared an amnesty for all political prisoners among the eight million persons of the Papal States.

The question for American followers of international news was, how could they tell others that a new era in international politics may have arrived, and how could they best assert their support for the republican forces of Europe? Now, a call would go to Burson-Marsteller, but in 1847 a group of New Yorkers met privately to discuss ways to register public approval of the papal action.

They decided to form a committee of influential men to organize a public meeting: Vanbrugh Livingston became chairman, and Horace Greeley, Theodore Sedgwick, William Cullen Bryant, James W. Gerard and Joseph Avezzana also participated. Several thousand people showed up at the meeting they arranged; New York Mayor William V. Brady spoke of the public support for the Pope’s reform efforts. Horace Greeley chaired a volunteer committee to write a letter to the Pope, and that letter was read to the audience:

We address you not as a Sovereign Pontiff, but as the wise and human Ruler of a once oppressed and discontented, now well-governed and gratefully happy people. We unite in this tribute, not as Catholics, which some of us are while the great number are not, but as . . . lovers of Constitutional Freedom.⁹

The letter was adopted by acclamation, and copies of it were distributed around the United States. That volunteer public relations effort led to resolutions by several legislatures, editorials in newspapers across the country, and a heartening of Europeans fighting for republican and against monarchical principles.

Another typical example of early 19th-century public relations work involved the development of railroads. There were no professional public relations staffers on the nascent railroad lines of the 1830s; nevertheless, public enthusiasm led to the volunteer publication of railroad brochures and booklets.

The first pro-railroad American magazine, for instance, emerged from the hamlet of Rogersville, Tennessee, after a group of excited citizens met to discuss ways to disseminate information on the utility and practicality of railroads. A committee of 20 published “The Railroad Advocate — Conducted by an Association of Gentlemen.” The first issue, published on July 4, 1831, advocated “extending the railroad throughout the country” as “an immediate means of encouraging industry and developing the resources of the state.”¹⁰

What could be called railroad “product introductions” were also decentralized, volunteer efforts. For instance, the opening of a railroad from Providence, Rhode Island, to Stonington, Connecticut, on March 10, 1837, was planned by an ad hoc Stonington committee. Committee members arranged for the steamer Narragansett to bring a party of railroad directors and guests from New York to Stonington. They had the guests greeted by the roar of an 18-pound cannon last used against the British in 1814. They put on a banquet at which everyone took turns making toasts, including the following:

To the ladies of Stonington — may the railroad, the completion of which we are this day called to celebrate, more extensively introduce their claims and virtues to their fellow citizens from Maine to Georgia.¹¹

Later on, of course, professionals planned systematic efforts to promote settlement along rail lines moving west. Early railroad enthusiasm, though, was one subset of the voluntarism that amazed French observer Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America in 1835.

Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. . . . If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society . . . what political power could ever [do what Americans voluntarily] perform every day with the assistance of the principle of association?¹²

De Tocqueville was impressed not only by voluntarism, but by public relations restraint as well. He noted the existence of strong theological constraints during the 1830s: “While the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust.”¹³

Given our human ability to contemplate wrongdoing, de Tocqueville may have been overoptimistic on the conceiving, but he probably was accurate on the committing. Techniques of opinion manipulation were not unknown in 19th-century America, and some patent medicine advertising of the period reached heights of eloquent but fraudulent persuasion far beyond those yet reached by current television commercializing. Yet when it came to attempting to move men’s minds in particular directions concerning the virtues and vices of ideas, or to praise or excoriate particular individuals, there was an unwillingness to serve merely as a “hired gun.”

It is vital to understand this if we are to properly appreciate the early 19thcentury volunteers, and even some of the individuals frequently cited as predecessors of the modern, professional public relations practitioner. For instance, Amos Kendall of the Jackson administration was criticized by his contemporaries for lower standards than most, but he still knew that honor has value.

One of my favorite Kendall stories concerns his response to a request for public relations assistance from a future United States vice president, Richard M. Johnson: Kendall wrote that, “I shall give Richard my vote, but I shall not be his tool.”¹⁴ Historian Claude G. Bowers observed concerning Kendall:

He promised himself never knowingly to misrepresent; if, through mistake, he did, to rectify the mistake without being asked; never to retract a statement he thought true; to resent an insult in kind; to defend himself, if assaulted, by any means necessary, even to killing, and never to run.¹⁵

Kendall emphasized a newspaper editor’s or publicist’s “awful responsibility” to “himself, his Country and his God.”¹⁶

Even P. T. Barnum, often held up as a prototypical manipulator who profited by deceiving the helpless, had a practice far removed from the hidden persuasion that some say has followed. Barnum’s hoodwinking in antebellum America was done with a wink, and his practice as well as his consumer guide, Humbugs of the World, condemned deceptions which hurt, such as those of lottery sharks and phony auctioneers.¹⁷

Barnum believed that because a sucker is born every minute, it is up to those who sell either goods or entertainment to exercise restraint and pass up the opportunity to take candy from babies. As Daniel Boorstin has noted in The Image, “contrary to popular belief, Barnum’s great discovery was not how easy it was to deceive the public, but rather, how much the public enjoyed being deceived. Especially if they could see how it was being done.”¹⁸ Barnum was a magician who enjoyed explaining his tricks, not a Great and Powerful Oz who stood behind the curtain with guards to keep away little dogs.

The emphasis on restraint was ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION Asking Basic Questions
• CHAPTER ONE Voluntarism and Restraint: Early 19th-century Public Relations
• CHAPTER TWO Onto the Gravy Train: 19th-century Railroad Public Relations
• CHAPTER THREE Railroad Executives and the Interstate Commerce Commission
• CHAPTER FOUR Two-Front War: Early 20th-century Utility Public Relations
• CHAPTER FIVE Minimizing Competition Through Public Relations: The Work of Ivy Lee
• CHAPTER SIX The Movie Industry Gets a Czar: 1921-1934
• CHAPTER SEVEN Come the Depression: Corporate Public Relations and the National Recovery Administration
• CHAPTER EIGHT “Bringing Order Out of Chaos”: The Public Relations Theory of Edward Bernays
• CHAPTER NINE The Triumph of Manipulation Bernays Becomes Publicist No. 1
• CHAPTER TEN Public Relations Adds Sugar
• CHAPTER ELEVEN Last Stand For Steel
• CHAPTER TWELVE Governmental Relations and Contributions Policies: 1962-1982
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN Ministers or Panderers: Issues Raised by the PRSA Code of Professional Standards: 1954-1986
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Four-Fold Discipline
• CONCLUSION A Word to Corporate Executives
• NOTES
• INDEX