Propaganda
_BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
CRYSTALLIZING PUBLIC OPINION
AN OUTLINE OF CAREERS
THE BROADWAY ANTHOLOGY (CO-AUTHOR)
PROPAGANDA
_By_
EDWARD L. BERNAYS
[Illustration]
_New York_
HORACE LIVERIGHT
1928
_Copyright · 1928 · by_
HORACE LIVERIGHT · INC
_Printed in the United States_
[Illustration]
_To My Wife_
DORIS E. FLEISCHMAN
Some of the ideas and some of the material in this book have been used
in articles written for _The Bookman_, _The Delineator_, _Advertising
and Selling_, _The Independent_, _The American Journal of Sociology_,
and other journals, to whom the author makes grateful acknowledgment.
CONTENTS
I. ORGANIZING CHAOS 9
II. THE NEW PROPAGANDA 19
III. THE NEW PROPAGANDISTS 32
IV. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS 47
V. BUSINESS AND THE PUBLIC 62
VI. PROPAGANDA AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP 92
VII. WOMEN’S ACTIVITIES AND PROPAGANDA 115
VIII. PROPAGANDA FOR EDUCATION 121
IX. PROPAGANDA IN SOCIAL SERVICE 135
X. ART AND SCIENCE 141
XI. THE MECHANICS OF PROPAGANDA 150
CHAPTER I
ORGANIZING CHAOS
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and
opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an
invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas
suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical
result of the way 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.
Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of
their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability
to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social
structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition,
it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether
in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our
ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number
of persons—a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million—who
understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It
is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness
old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors
are to the orderly functioning of our group life. In theory, every
citizen may vote for whom he pleases. Our Constitution does not
envisage political parties as part of the mechanism of government,
and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the existence
in our national politics of anything like the modern political
machine. But the American voters soon found that without organization
and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or
hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion. Invisible
government, in the shape of rudimentary political parties, arose almost
overnight. Ever since then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity
and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of
choice to two candidates, or at most three or four.
In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and
matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study
for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data
involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come
to a conclusion about anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an
invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues
so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions.
From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we
accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public
questions; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite
essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code
of social conduct to which we conform most of the time.
In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered
him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and
chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics
or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become
hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have
its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention
through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and
continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some
policy or commodity or idea.
It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading,
committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our
conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes
for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have
chosen the opposite method, that of open competition. We must find a
way to make free competition function with reasonable smoothness. To
achieve this society has consented to permit free competition to be
organized by leadership and propaganda.
Some of the phenomena of this process are criticized—the manipulation
of news, the inflation of personality, and the general ballyhoo by
which politicians and commercial products and social ideas are brought
to the consciousness of the masses. The instruments by which public
opinion is organized and focused may be misused. But such organization
and focusing are necessary to orderly life.
As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible
government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have
been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.
With the printing press and the newspaper, the railroad, the telephone,
telegraph, radio and airplanes, ideas can be spread rapidly and even
instantaneously over the whole of America.
H. G. Wells senses the vast potentialities of these inventions when he
writes in the New York _Times_:
“Modern means of communication—the power afforded by print, telephone,
wireless and so forth, of rapidly putting through directive strategic
or technical conceptions to a great number of coöperating centers,
of getting quick replies and effective discussion—have opened up a
new world of political processes. Ideas and phrases can now be given
an effectiveness greater than the effectiveness of any personality
and stronger than any sectional interest. The common design can be
documented and sustained against perversion and betrayal. It can be
elaborated and developed steadily and widely without personal, local
and sectional misunderstanding.”
What Mr. Wells says of political processes is equally true of
commercial and social processes and all manifestations of mass
activity. The groupings and affiliations of society to-day are
no longer subject to “local and sectional” limitations. When the
Constitution was adopted, the unit of organization was the village
community, which produced the greater part of its own necessary
commodities and generated its group ideas and opinions by personal
contact and discussion directly among its citizens. But to-day, because
ideas can be instantaneously transmitted to any distance and to any
number of people, this geographical integration has been supplemented
by many other kinds of grouping, so that persons having the same ideas
and interests may be associated and regimented for common action even
though they live thousands of miles apart.
It is extremely difficult to realize how many and diverse are these
cleavages in our society. They may be social, political, economic,
racial, religious or ethical, with hundreds of subdivisions of each.
In the World Almanac, for example, the following groups are listed
under the A’s:
The League to Abolish Capital Punishment; Association to Abolish
War; American Institute of Accountants; Actors’ Equity Association;
Actuarial Association of America; International Advertising
Association; National Aeronautic Association; Albany Institute of
History and Art; Amen Corner; American Academy in Rome; American
Antiquarian Society; League for American Citizenship; American
Federation of Labor; Amorc (Rosicrucian Order); Andiron Club;
American-Irish Historical Association; Anti-Cigarette League;
Anti-Profanity League; Archeological Association of America; National
Archery Association; Arion Singing Society; American Astronomical
Association; Ayrshire Breeders’ Association; Aztec Club of 1847. There
are many more under the “A” section of this very limited list.
The American Newspaper Annual and Directory for 1928 lists 22,128
periodical publications in America. I have selected at random the N’s
published in Chicago. They are:
Narod (Bohemian daily newspaper); Narod-Polski (Polish monthly);
N.A.R.D. (pharmaceutical); National Corporation Reporter; National
Culinary Progress (for hotel chefs); National Dog Journal; National
Drug Clerk; National Engineer; National Grocer; National Hotel
Reporter; National Income Tax Magazine; National Jeweler; National
Journal of Chiropractic; National Live Stock Producer; National Miller;
National Nut News; National Poultry, Butter and Egg Bulletin; National
Provisioner (for meat packers); National Real Estate Journal; National
Retail Clothier; National Retail Lumber Dealer; National Safety News;
National Spiritualist; National Underwriter; The Nation’s Health;
Naujienos (Lithuanian daily newspaper); New Comer (Republican weekly
for Italians); Daily News; The New World (Catholic weekly); North
American Banker; North American Veterinarian.
The circulation of some of these publications is astonishing. The
National Live Stock Producer has a sworn circulation of 155,978; The
National Engineer, of 20,328; The New World, an estimated circulation
of 67,000. The greater number of the periodicals listed—chosen at
random from among 22,128—have a circulation in excess of 10,000.
The diversity of these publications is evident at a glance. Yet they
can only faintly suggest the multitude of cleavages which exist in
our society, and along which flow information and opinion carrying
authority to the individual groups.
Here are the conventions scheduled for Cleveland, Ohio, recorded in
a single recent issue of “World Convention Dates”—a fraction of the
5,500 conventions and rallies scheduled.
The Employing Photo-Engravers’ Association of America; The Outdoor
Writers’ Association; the Knights of St. John; the Walther League;
The National Knitted Outerwear Association; The Knights of St.
Joseph; The Royal Order of Sphinx; The Mortgage Bankers’ Association;
The International Association of Public Employment Officials; The
Kiwanis Clubs of Ohio; The American Photo-Engravers’ Association; The
Cleveland Auto Manufacturers Show; The American Society of Heating and
Ventilating Engineers.
Other conventions to be held in 1928 were those of:
The Association of Limb Manufacturers’ Associations; The National
Circus Fans’ Association of America; The American Naturopathic
Association; The American Trap Shooting Association; The Texas Folklore
Association; The Hotel Greeters; The Fox Breeders’ Association; The
Insecticide and Disinfectant Association; The National Association of
Egg Case and Egg Case Filler Manufacturers; The American Bottlers of
Carbonated Beverages; and The National Pickle Packers’ Association, not
to mention the Terrapin Derby—most of them with banquets and orations
attached.
If all these thousands of formal organizations and institutions
could be listed (and no complete list has ever been made), they
would still represent but a part of those existing less formally but
leading vigorous lives. Ideas are sifted and opinions stereotyped in
the neighborhood bridge club. Leaders assert their authority through
community drives and amateur theatricals. Thousands of women may
unconsciously belong to a sorority which follows the fashions set by a
single society leader.
“Life” satirically expresses this idea in the reply which it represents
an American as giving to the Britisher who praises this country for
having no upper and lower classes or castes:
“Yeah, all we have is the Four Hundred, the White-Collar Men,
Bootleggers, Wall Street Barons, Criminals, the D.A.R., the K.K.K.,
the Colonial Dames, the Masons, Kiwanis and Rotarians, the K. of C.,
the Elks, the Censors, the Cognoscenti, the Morons, Heroes like Lindy,
the W.C.T.U., Politicians, Menckenites, the Booboisie, Immigrants,
Broadcasters, and—the Rich and Poor.”
Yet it must be remembered that these thousands of groups interlace.
John Jones, besides being a Rotarian, is member of a church, of a
fraternal order, of a political party, of a charitable organization, of
a professional association, of a local chamber of commerce, of a league
for or against prohibition or of a society for or against lowering
the tariff, and of a golf club. The opinions which he receives as a
Rotarian, he will tend to disseminate in the other groups in which he
may have influence.
This invisible, intertwining structure of groupings and associations
is the mechanism by which democracy has organized its group mind and
simplified its mass thinking. To deplore the existence of such a
mechanism is to ask for a society such as never was and never will
be. To admit that it exists, but expect that it shall not be used, is
unreasonable.
Emil Ludwig represents Napoleon as “ever on the watch for indications
of public opinion; always listening to the voice of the people, a
voice which defies calculation. ‘Do you know,’ he said in those days,
‘what amazes me more than all else? The impotence of force to organize
anything.’”
It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the
mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is
manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public
acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the
same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for
this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of
ethics and practice.