We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 August 2017
The eve of World War II saw the development of direct connections between public relations experts and issues of foreign affairs in the United States. Public relations professionals assisted both internationalists and noninterventionists to spread their arguments across the nation, helping them to hone their messages, to organize, and to raise money. All of the main citizens’ organizations created during this period sought public relations assistance in the face of growing popular awareness of global events, and with an awareness of the need for public relations counsel in the face of an increasingly measurable concept of public opinion.
1 Bernays, Edward L., ed., The Engineering of Consent (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), 3–4Google Scholar.
2 On the noninterventionists see Doenecke, Justus D., Storm on the Horizon (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000)Google Scholar; Cole, Wayne S., America First (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953)Google Scholar. On the internationalists see Johnstone, Andrew, Against Immediate Evil: American Internationalists and the Four Freedoms on the Eve of World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Friedman, Donald J., The Road from Isolation: The Campaign of the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression 1938–1941 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Johnson, Walter, The Battle against Isolation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1944)Google Scholar; Chadwin, Mark Lincoln, The Hawks of World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968)Google Scholar. On the broader concepts of “isolationism” and “internationalism” see Johnstone, Andrew, “Isolationism and Internationalism in American Foreign Relations,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 9 (March 2011), 7–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blower, Brooke, “From Isolationism to Neutrality: A New Framework for Understanding American Political Culture, 1919–1941,” Diplomatic History, 38 (April 2014), 345–376CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 The only brief previous acknowledgements of a public relations connection to these organizations are in Masland, John W., “Pressure Groups and American Foreign Policy,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 6 (Spring 1942), 115–22, 119CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Doenecke, Justus D., ed., In Danger Undaunted: The Anti-interventionist Movement of 1940–1941 as Revealed in the Papers of the America First Committee (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1990), 29Google Scholar; and Johnstone, Against Immediate Evil, 25, 60, 82–83, 111–12, 121.
4 Other key studies on this period that consider public opinion but ignore public relations include Kaiser, David, No End Save Victory: How FDR Led the Nation into War (New York: Basic Books, 2014)Google Scholar; Dunn, Susan, 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler – the Election amid the Storm (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; Olsen, Lynne, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight over World War II (New York: Random House, 2013)Google Scholar; Reynolds, David, From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt's America and the Origins of the Second World War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001)Google Scholar; Heinrichs, Waldo, Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Langer, William L. and Gleason, S. Everett, The Challenge to Isolation, 1937–1940 (New York: Harper, 1952)Google Scholar; Langer, William L. and Gleason, S. Everett, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Harper, 1953)Google Scholar.
5 Rosenberg, Emily S., “U.S. Mass Consumerism in Transnational Perspective,” in Costigliola, Frank and Hogan, Michael J., eds., America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 307–37, 325Google Scholar.
6 On public relations see Cutlip, Scott M., The Unseen Power: Public Relations. A History (Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994)Google Scholar; Tedlow, Richard S., Keeping the Corporate Image: Public Relations and Business, 1900–1950 (Greenwich: JAI Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Ewen, Stuart, PR! A Social History of Spin (New York: Basic Books, 1996)Google Scholar. The annual International History of Public Relations Conference began in 2010, reflecting a growing interest in the history of the subject, an interest also seen in the publication of Greenberg, David, Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016)Google Scholar. On Bernays see Tye, Larry, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations (New York: Henry Holt, 1998)Google Scholar. On fund-raising see Cutlip, Scott M., Fund Raising in the United States: Its Role in American Philanthropy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Zunz, Oliver, Philanthropy in America: A History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.
7 On domestic World War I propaganda see Vaughn, Stephen, Holding Fast the Inner Lines: Democracy, Nationalism, and the Committee on Public Information (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980)Google Scholar. For concerns about propaganda during the interwar years see Gary, Brett, The Nervous Liberals: Propaganda Anxieties from World War I to the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999)Google Scholar. For studies of the government's propaganda apparatus during World War II see Winkler, Allan M., The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information 1942–1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978)Google Scholar.
8 On public diplomacy see Cull, Nicholas J., The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Belmonte, Laura A., Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hart, Justin, Empire of Ideas: The Origins of Public Diplomacy and the Transformation of U.S. Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the idea of World War II as a public relations war in a broader sense see Fussell, Paul, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 143–64Google Scholar.
9 See for example, Wall, Wendy L., Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Phillips-Fein, Kim, Invisible Hands: The Businessman's Crusade against the New Deal (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009)Google Scholar; and Wilson, Mark R., Destructive Creation: American Business and the Winning of World War II (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Stuart to Hanford MacNider, 30 Aug. 1941, Correspondence with Nat Com Members folder, Box 63, America First Committee Papers, Hoover Institution Archives (hereafter AFC Papers).
11 Tedlow, xviii. For recent work that broadens the definition of public relations beyond corporate professionals see Watson, Tom, ed., North American Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Cutlip, The Unseen Power, 105; Lippmann, Walter, Public Opinion (New York: Macmillan, 1922)Google Scholar; Bernays, Edward L., Crystallizing Public Opinion (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923)Google Scholar. On the Committee on Public Information see Vaughn.
13 Cutlip, The Unseen Power, 73–91, 140–53, 547–51; Tedlow, 91–92. On Ivy Lee see Hiebert, Ray Eldon, Courtier to the Crowd: The Story of Ivy Lee and the Development of Public Relations (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1966)Google Scholar.
14 On the growth of opinion polling see Igo, Sarah E., The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 103–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 On Roosevelt's awareness of the power of public opinion see Casey, Steven, Cautious Crusade: Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War against Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3–45Google Scholar.
16 Cutlip, Scott M., Center, Allen H., and Broom, Glen M., Effective Public Relations (Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 2000), 122Google Scholar; Cutlip, The Unseen Power, 227–28; Cutlip, Fund Raising in the United States, 172–74; Zunz, Philanthropy in America, 67; Jones cited in Cutlip, The Unseen Power, 107, 226, 232–34.
17 John Price Jones Corporation Service Manual for Fund Raising Campaigns (c.1936), John Price Jones Corporation folder, Box 15, American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University (hereafter ACNPJA Papers); Cutlip, Center, and Broom, 123–25; Cutlip, Fund Raising in the United States, 178.
18 Washington Post, 27 June 1921, 6; Cutlip, The Unseen Power, 238; Divine, Robert A., Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America during World War II (New York: Atheneum, 1967), 22–23Google Scholar; John Price Jones Corporation Service Manual.
19 Progress and Program of the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression, 16 Feb. 1940, Reports on Progress 1938 folder, Box 16, ACNPJA Papers; Harry Price to Henry L. Stimson, 16 Dec. 1938, microfilm frames 0974–77, Reel 96, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Stimson to Price, 27 Dec. 1938, Folder 699, Box 21, Roger Greene Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University; Friedman, The Road from Isolation, 1–4; D. Kenneth Rose to Price, 5 Jan. 1939, John Price Jones Corporation folder, Box 15, ACNPJA Papers.
20 Suggested Steps for the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression, 25 Jan. 1939, John Price Jones Corporation folder, Box 15, ACNPJA Papers; Progress and Program of the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression, 16 Feb. 1940, Reports on Progress 1938 folder, Box 16, ACNPJA Papers.
21 Suggested Steps for the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression.
22 Price to E. Snell Hall, 1 Sept. 1942, ACNPJA ending folder, Box 16, ACNPJA Papers; Jones, John Price and Church, David McLaren, At the Bar of Public Opinion: A Brief for Public Relations (New York: Inter-River Press, 1939), 69–70Google Scholar.
23 The American Union for Concerted Peace Efforts evolved out of the existing and similarly named Committee for Concerted Peace Efforts. The Committee for Concerted Peace Efforts was formed in December 1937 in the aftermath of Franklin Roosevelt's quarantine speech, and contained many members of the League of Nations Association. Press release, Supplementary Information to Statement Issued by William Allen White at Emporia, Kansas, 3 Oct. 1939, AUCPE releases folder, Box 45, Clark Eichelberger Papers, New York Public Library, New York (hereafter Eichelberger Papers).
24 Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Directors, 16 Oct. 1939, Minutes 1939–40 AUCPE folder, Box 53, Eichelberger Papers; Dallek, Robert, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 204–5Google Scholar.
25 Breakdown of Chapter Organization, 28 April 1941, Folder 7, Box 11, Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies Papers, Seeley G. Mudd Library, Princeton University (hereafter CDAAA Papers).
26 Brief for a Survey and Plan, 2 Oct. 1940, “Brief,” Volume 1 (C-283), CDAAA files, John Price Jones Company records, Baker Library, Harvard Business School (hereafter JPJC records); CDAAA Review of Finances, 20 Dec. 1940, volume 11 (C-292), CDAAA files, JPJC records.
27 Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies Addenda to Review of Finances, 14 Jan. 1941, Review of Finances, CDAAA file, Volume 11 (C-292), JPJC records.
28 Brief of Organization Plan for the Campaign of the CDAAA, June 1940, Brief of Plan, CDAAA file, volume 1 (C-283), JPJC records; Alfred C. Gumbrecht to John Price Jones, 2 Oct. 1940, Brief, CDAAA file, Volume 1 (C-283), JPJC records.
29 Suggestions for Future Action of the CDAAA, 20 June 1940, Suggestions on Activities CDAAA file, Volume 1 (C-283), JPJC records; Policies, Aims and Accomplishments of the CDAAA, 9 Oct. 1940, Folder 15, Box 9, CDAAA Papers; Johnstone, Andrew, “To Mobilize a Nation: Citizens’ Organizations and Intervention on the Eve of World War II,” in Johnstone, Andrew and Laville, Helen, eds., The US Public and American Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2010), 26–40, 28–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Memorandum on Chapter Organization, 9 Oct. 1941, Folder 18, Box 5, CDAAA Papers.
30 Harold J. Seymour to John Price Jones and Robert Duncan, 14 June 1940, “‘Fifth Column’ Activities”, Volume 1 (C-283), CDAAA files, JPJC records; Parmar, Inderjeet, “‘… Another Important Group That Needs More Cultivation’: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Mobilization of Black Americans for Interventionism, 1939–1941,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27 (Sept. 2004), 717CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 Situation Report, 15 July 1940, 7 Oct. 1940, 21 Oct. 1940, Situation Reports, CDAAA file, Volume 1 (C-283), JPJC records; Suggestions for Future Action of the CDAAA.
32 Situation Report, 29 July 1940, Situation Reports, CDAAA file, Volume 1 (C-283), JPJC records; Roosevelt, Franklin D., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt: 1940 (London: Macmillan, 1941), 391–407Google Scholar; Franklin Roosevelt to Stephen Early, 5 Sept. 1940, PPF 1196, Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY (hereafter Roosevelt Papers); Resolution, 7 Nov. 1940, Correspondence I–K folder, Box 1, CDAAA Papers.
33 Harold M. Weeks to John Price Jones, 30 Oct. 1940, Weak and Strong Points, Volume 1 (C-283), CDAAA files, JPJC records.
34 Ibid.
35 Situation Report, 7 Oct. 1940, 21 Oct. 1940, 25 Nov. 1940, Situation Reports, CDAAA file, Volume 1 (C-283), JPJC records; Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies Addenda to Review of Finances, 14 Jan. 1941, Review of Finances, CDAAA file, Volume 11 (C-292), JPJC records.
36 Johnson, Battle against Isolation, 181–83; Situation Report, 30 Dec. 1940, 6 Jan. 1941, 1 March 1941, Situation Reports, CDAAA file, Volume 1 (C-283), JPJC records.
37 Situation Report, 5 April 1941, 21 April 1941, Situation Reports, CDAAA file, Volume 1 (C-283), JPJC records; Mrs. Harriman File, 15 April 1941, OF 4230, Roosevelt Papers; Greene to Hugh Moore, 23 June 1941, Folder 20, Box 5, Hugh Moore Fund Papers, Seeley G. Mudd Library, Princeton University; Situation Report, 28 April 1941, 9 June 1941, Situation Reports, CDAAA file, Volume 1 (C-283), JPJC records.
38 White was replaced by former Vermont Senator Ernest W. Gibson Jr., but he too resigned in May 1941 when he was called up for active service in the US Army. Situation Report, 21 April 1941, 23 June 1941, 21 July 1941, Situation Reports, CDAAA file, Volume 1 (C-283), JPJC records.
39 Situation Report, 26 July 1941, 11 Aug. 1941, 18 Aug. 1941, Situation Reports, CDAAA file, Volume 1 (C-283), JPJC records; Moore to Ellsworth Bunker, 6 July 1941, Correspondence: Moore, Hugh 1941 June–1942 Feb. folder, Box 2, CDAAA Papers; Cole, America First, 32.
40 McIntosh Memorandum, 22 Oct. 1941, Correspondence M (3 of 6) folder, Box 1, CDAAA Papers; Contract Letter, 27 Oct. 1941 Correspondence: White, William Allen 1940 Jun.–1941 Oct. folder, Box 2, CDAAA Papers; Moore to Chester La Roche, 14 June 1941, Fundraising Finance Committee Correspondence (I–M) folder, Box 29, CDAAA Papers.
41 Cutlip, Fund Raising in the United States, 165–66. Tamblyn and Brown actually worked with the John Price Jones Corporation in 1941, raising funds for the newly created United Service Organizations. See ibid., 401.
42 Memorandum, 9 June 1941, Folder 3, Box 51, Fight for Freedom Papers, Seeley G. Mudd Library, Princeton University (hereafter FFF Papers); finances memo, undated, Folder 10, Box 53, FFF Papers; Situation Report, 1 Dec. 1941, Folder 11, Box 51, FFF Papers; cash statement, 10. Dec. 1941, Folder 1, Box 52, FFF Papers.
43 Ulric Bell to A. W. MacCarthy, 23 Aug. 1941, Folder 4, Box 51, FFF Papers.
44 Cole, 11–12; Doenecke, Storm on the Horizon, 165.
45 Robert Wood to Walter Shaw, 1 May 1941, Se folder, Box 81, AFC Papers; Howard Beaver to R. Douglas Stuart, 29 April 1941, B: Jan.–April folder, Box 58, AFC Papers; Stuart, Robert D. Jr., Making a Difference: Memoirs of a Lucky Man (Chicago: Coventry Group, 2006), 73–74Google Scholar. Also see Hyman, Sidney, The Lives of William Benton (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969), 238–39Google Scholar; Schaffer, Howard B., Chester Bowles: New Dealer in the Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 26–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bowles was the only one of these three advertising men who officially joined the national committee.
46 Bernays, Edward L., Speak Up for Democracy (New York: Viking Press, 1940)Google Scholar, Box 296, AFC Papers; Stuart to Wood, 26 April 1941, Stuart R. D. Jr. folder, Box 57, AFC Papers; Robert Bliss memo, 9 Dec. 1940, Organization of Chapter folder, Box 285, AFC Papers; William Harshe to Stuart, 14 Nov. 1940, Senate Foreign Relation folder, Box 66, AFC Papers. Selvage and Smith would later become Manning, Selvage and Lee.
47 William Castle to Stuart, 17 April 1941, Correspondence with Nat Com Members folder, Box 63, AFC Papers; memorandum, undated, James Selvage folder, Box 67, AFC Papers.
48 Stuart to James Selvage, 29 March 1941, James Selvage folder, Box 67, AFC Papers; Stuart to Wood, 26 April 1941, Stuart R. D. Jr. folder, Box 57, AFC Papers; Stuart to Samuel Pettengill, 26 April 1941, Samuel Pettengill folder, Box 62, AFC Papers; Selvage to Wood, 11 April 1941, James Selvage folder, Box 67, AFC Papers; Selvage to Smith Richardson, 6 May 1941, James Selvage folder, Box 67, AFC Papers.
49 Cole, 108; Selvage to Stuart, 14 April 1941, James Selvage folder, Box 67, AFC Papers; Selvage to Stuart, 29 April 1941, James Selvage folder, Box 67, AFC Papers; Bowles to Stuart, 1 May 1941, Chester Bowles folder, Box 59, AFC Papers; Selvage to Stuart, 14 April 1941, James Selvage folder, Box 67, AFC Papers; Minutes of the Board of Directors, 28 March 1941, Corporate Records folder, Box 337, AFC Papers; Minutes of the Board of Directors, 10 April 1941, Corporate Records folder, Box 337, AFC Papers. For numerous responses to Selvage's draft principles see Letters on New Principles folder, Box 291, AFC Papers.
50 Selvage to Smith Richardson, 6 May 1941, James Selvage folder, Box 67, AFC Papers.
51 Ibid.; New York Times, 12 Sept. 1941, 2.
52 Page Hufty to John Wheeler, 5 Aug. 1941, Page Hufty Correspondence folder, Box 3, AFC Papers; Frederic Chase to Hufty, 14 Nov. 1941, Earl C. Jeffrey folder, Box 4, AFC Papers; Bruce Barton to Stuart, 13 Jan. 1941, Miscellaneous folder, Box 56, AFC Papers; Robert Hutchins to Stuart, 218 April 1941, Robert M. Hutchins folder, Box 60, AFC Papers; John Flynn to Wood, 3 Dec. 1941, Abeyance folder, Box 284, AFC Papers; Doenecke, In Danger Undaunted, 56 n. 52.
53 Robert Wood to Walter Shaw, 1 May 1941, Se folder, Box 81, AFC Papers.
54 Sherry, Michael S., In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 54Google Scholar.
55 MacLeish cited in Hart, Empire of Ideas, 75; John Sloan Dickey interview by Jere Daniell, 3 March 1975, tapes 1–11, transcript, 166–67, Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, at www.dartmouth.edu/~library/rauner/archives/oral_history/dickey/docs_interviews/JSDTapes1-11.pdf; Johnstone, Andrew, “Creating a ‘Democratic Foreign Policy’: The State Department's Division of Public Liaison and Public Opinion, 1944–1953,” Diplomatic History, 35 (June 2011), 483–503CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Morgan., Joseph G. The Vietnam Lobby: The American Friends of Vietnam, 1955–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 51Google Scholar; Connelly, Matthew, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 138Google Scholar; Miller, David and Dinan, William, A Century of Spin: How Public Relations Became the Cutting Edge of Corporate Power (London, Pluto Press, 2008), 100–1Google Scholar. For a broader definition of public relations in this period see Osgood, Kenneth, Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006)Google Scholar.
