PART IIITechnique and Method
Whenthe United States was made up of small social units with common traditions and a small geographic and social area, it was comparatively simple for the proponent of a point of view to address his public directly. If he represented a social or a political idea, he could, at no very great expense and with no very great difficulty in the early Eighteenth Century, cover New England with his pamphlets. He could arouse the thirteen colonies with his journals and brochures. That was because the heritage of these groups made them sensitive to the same stimuli. One man, remarks Mr. Lippmann, then was able single-handed to crystallize the common will of his country in his day and generation. To-day the greatest superman as yet developed by humanity could not accomplish the same result with the United States.
Populations have increased. In this country geographical areas have increased. Heterogeneityhas also increased. A group living in any given area is now extremely likely to have no common ancestry, no common tradition, as such, and no cohesive intelligence. All these elements make it necessary to-day for the proponent of a point of view to engage an expert to represent him before society, an expert who must know how to reach groups totally dissimilar as to ideals, customs and even language. It is this necessity which has resulted in the development of the counsel on public relations.
Now it must be understood that the proponent of a point of view, whether acting alone or under the guidance of a public relations counsel, must utilize existing avenues of approach. Modern conditions are such that it is not feasible to build up independent organs. Innovators and innovations cannot create their own channels of communication. They must for a great part work through the existing daily press, the existing magazine, the existing lecture circuit, existing advertising mediums, the existing motion picture channels and other means for the communication of ideas. The public relations counsel, on behalf of the groups he represents, must reach majorities and minorities through their respective approaches.
If the public relations counsel can succeed in presenting ideas and facts to the public in spiteof the heterogeneity of society, in spite of the vast psychological and geographic problems, in spite of the difficulties, monetary and otherwise, of reaching and influencing populations numbering millions—if he can succeed in overcoming these difficulties by a skillful understanding of the situation, his profession is socially valuable.
Absolute homogeneity, resulting in a dead level of uniformity in public and individual reaction, is undesirable. On the other hand, agreement on broad social purposes is essential to progress. Agreement on broad industrial purposes may be equally desirable. Without such agreement, without unified purposes, there can be no progress and the unit must fall. The men who were most effective in stimulating national morale during the war never lost sight of these underlying needs, whether they stimulated a whole nation to ration itself voluntarily and give up the eating of sugar, or whether they stimulated knitting and Red Cross activities and voluntary contributions to funds.
Three ways are cited by Mr. Lippmann to obtain cohesive force among the special and local interests which make up national and social units. The public relations counsel avails himself only of the third. The first method which is described is that of “patronage and pork.” This is very largely the method relied upon by certain legislativebodies to-day to maintain cohesive force. As an instance of this, the investigations of the methods used in connection with the bills to secure the building of local post offices or the dredging of harbors or rivers seem to point out that a representative from one community will promise reciprocal support to the member from another community, if he in turn will act favorably on another item. This method intensifies the feeling that all are working together, even though they may not be working for the highest interests of the country. Similarly the chief executive of a city may institute certain measures to placate school teachers. He will expect the school teachers to support him on some other project at some other period.
The second method named by Mr. Lippmann24is “government by terror and obedience.”
The third method is “government based on such a highly developed system of information, analysis and self-consciousness that ‘the knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of state’ is evident to all men. The autocratic system is in decay. The voluntary system is in its very earliest development and so, in calculating the prospects of associations among large groups of people, a league of nations, industrial government, or a federal union of states, the degree towhich the material for a common consciousness exists determines how far coöperation will depend upon force, or upon the milder alternative to force, which is patronage and privilege. The secret of great state builders, like Alexander Hamilton, is that they know how to calculate these principles.”
The method of education by information, which was to a great extent relied upon by the United States, for example, was evidenced in the formation during the war of such agencies as the Committee on Public Information. The public relations counsel, through the mediums chosen by him, presented to the public the information necessary to aid in understanding America’s war aims and ideals. George Creel and his organization reached vast groups, representing every phase of our national elements, in every modern method of thought communication. But even in the United States the other two methods were used to obtain cohesive force.
In fact the method least relied upon in any of the belligerent countries was that of “government based on such a highly developed system of information, analysis and self-consciousness that ‘the knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of state’ is evident to all men.”
This breakdown did not occur among small,inefficiently organised groups. It occurred among the representatives of the highest development in social organization.
If this was the fate of the most highly organized social groups, consider then the problem which confronts the social, economic, educational or political groups in peace time, when they attempt to obtain a public hearing for new ideas. Innumerable instances have shown the difficulty that any group faces in gaining an acceptance for its ideas.
The development of the United States to its present size and diversification has intensified the difficulty of creating a common will on any subject because it has heightened the natural tendency of men to separate into crowds opposed to one another in point of view. This difficulty is further emphasized by the fact that often these crowds live in different traditional, moral and spiritual worlds. The physical difficulties of communication make group separation greater.
Mr. Trotter’s conclusions from a study of the gregarious instinct are singularly apt on this point. He says that25“the enormous power of varied reaction possessed by man must render necessary for his attainment of the full advantages of the gregarious habit a power of inter-communication of absolutely unprecedented fineness.It is clear that scarcely a hint of such power has yet appeared, and it is equally obvious that it is this defect which gives to society the characteristics which are the contempt of the man of science and the disgust of the humanitarian.”
When the worker was of the same ancestry as his employer, labor difficulties, for example, could be discussed in terms which were comprehensible to both parties. To-day the United States Steel Corporation must exert tremendous effort to present its view to its thousands of employees who are South Europeans, North Europeans, Americans.
Czechoslovakia, during the Peace Conference, wanted to appeal to its countrymen in America, but this group was vague and scattered in a population that lived in many cities throughout the country. The public relations counsel who was engaged to reach this scattered population had, therefore, to translate his appeals so that they might be understood logically and emotionally by the educated and the uneducated, the urban, the rural, the laboring and the professional man.
The same problem in a quite different guise presented itself to the public relations counsel who wanted to insure a public response to the appeal of the Diaghileff Russian Ballet, of which the public knew nothing. He had, therefore, tosurmount the difficulties of dissimilar geographic and artistic heritage and taste, of unwillingness to accept novelty and of interests already firmly attached to other forms of amusement.
Dominant groups to-day are more secure in their position than was the most successful autocrat of several hundred years ago, because to-day the inertia which must be overcome in order to displace these groups is so much greater. So many persons with so many different points of view must be reached and unified before anything effective can be done. Unity can be secured only by finding the greatest common factor or divisor of all the groups; and it is difficult to find one common factor which will appeal to a large and unhomogeneous group.
A very simple and broadly appealing campaign for reaching the public was undertaken recently by the railroads in combination. They utilized the poster in graphic, fundamental appeal to awaken an instinct of carefulness in regard to crossing railroad tracks. When the government sought to reëstablish ex-service men, the public relations counsel had to appeal vividly and quickly to employers and returned soldiers out of the vast complexity of their interests. He selected the most fundamental appeals of loyalty, fairness and patriotism in order to be understood actively.
Domination to-day is not a product of armies or navies or wealth or policies. It is a domination based on the one hand upon accomplished unity, and on the other hand upon the fact that opposition is generally characterized by a high degree of disunity. The institution of electing representatives to Congress is so firmly established that no existent force to-day can overthrow it. More specifically, why is it that the two parties, Republican and Democrat, have maintained themselves as the dominant force for so many years? Only the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt seemed for a time to supersede them; and events since then have shown that it was Roosevelt and not his party who succeeded. The Farmer-Labor Party, the Socialist Party despite years of campaigning have failed to become even strongly recognizable opponents to the established groups. The disunity of forces which seek to overthrow dominant groups is illustrated every day in every phase of our lives—political, moral and economic. A new point of view, although faced by the difficulty of unifying a group to concerted will or action, can seldom establish new mediums by which to approach those people to whom it wishes to appeal.
It is possible for advertising and pamphletizing to blanket the country at a cost. To establish a new lecture service in order to reach the publicwould be expensive, and effective only to a limited extent. To establish an independent radio station to broadcast an idea would be difficult and probably disproportionately expensive. To create a new motion picture and a distributing agency would be slow, and very difficult and costly, if possible at all.
The difficulty of establishing and building new channels of approach to the public is shown best by an examination of the principal mediums which are available to the public relations counsel who desires to direct public thought to the problems of the group he represents.
It is only necessary to picture the newspaper and magazine situation in the United States to-day to realize the difficulty of establishing a new medium for the representation of a point of view. Americans are accustomed to first-rate service from their press. They demand a high standard not only in the physical appearance of their newspapers but in the news service as well. Their daily paper must provide them with items of local, state and international interest and importance. In the complex activities of modern life, the newspaper must find and select the subjects which interest its readers. It must also give to its readers the news fresh from the making. Whatever vagueness there may be about the definitionof news itself, one admitted constant is that it must be fresh.
The cost of establishing a paper with a wide appeal, which will have the facilities of gathering news, of printing and distributing it, is such that groups can no longer depend upon their own organs of expression. The Christian Science church does not depend upon its admirable publication, theChristian Science Monitorin order to reach its own and new publics. Even where the issue demands a partisan or class origin of a newspaper, as in the case of a political party, the results achieved by so expensive and laborious a step seldom justify it.
Mr. Given in his book “Making a Newspaper,” points out the great expense that is attached to the publication of a large metropolitan daily. In proportion to their field of appeal and potential income, the smaller dailies undoubtedly face the same economic problems. Mr. Given says:26“Few persons not having intimate knowledge of a newspaper have any idea of the great amount of money required to start one, or to keep one running which is already established. The mechanical equipment and delivery service alone may demand an investment of several hundred thousand dollars—there is one New York paperwhose mechanical equipment cost $1,000,000—supplies are in constant demand, and the salary list is a long and heavy one. For a new paper the salary list of the editorial department is especially formidable, as editors and reporters who have employment with well-established publications are always reluctant to change to a venture that at best is in for a rough voyage, and can be attracted only by high pay.
“A good many of the newspapers that are started soon become memories, and fewer than are generally supposed are paying their own way. The sum of $3,000,000 would hardly suffice at the present time to equip a first-class newspaper establishment in New York City, issue a morning and an evening edition paper, build up a circulation of 75,000 for each, and place the establishment on a money-making basis. Run on the lines of those already established and possessing no extraordinary features to recommend them to the public, the two papers might continue to lose money for twenty years. When one learns that there are in New York business managers who are compelled to reckon with an average weekly expense account of nearly $50,000, he can understand the possibility of heavy losses. And it might be added, in contrast, that there are in New York newspapers which could not be bought for $10,000,000.”
Discussing substantially the same point, Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard observes the narrowing down of the number of newspapers in our large cities and points out the imminent danger of a news monopoly in the United States. He says:27“It is the danger that newspaper conditions, because of the enormously increased costs and this tendency to monopoly, may prevent people who are actuated by passion and sentiment from founding newspapers, which is causing many students of the situation much concern. What is to be the hope for the advocates of new-born and unpopular reforms if they cannot have a press of their own, as the Abolitionists and the founders of the Republican party set up theirs in a remarkably short time, usually with poverty-stricken bank accounts?”
The public relations counsel must always sub-divide the appeal of his subject and present it through the widest possible variety of avenues to the public. That these avenues must be existing avenues is both a limitation and an opportunity.
People accept the facts which come to them through existing channels. They like to hear new things in accustomed ways. They have neither the time nor the inclination to search forfacts that are not readily available to them. The expert, therefore, must advise first upon the form of action desirable for his client and secondly must utilize the established mediums of communication, in order to present to the public a point of view. This is true whether it is that of a majority or minority, old or new personality, institution or group which desires to change by modification or intensification the store of knowledge and the opinion of the public.