Both Trotter, Martin and the other writers we have quoted confirm what the actual experience of the public relations counsel shows--that the cause he represents must have some group reaction and tradition in common with the public he is trying to reach. This must exist before they can react sympathetically upon one another. Given these common fundamentals, much can be done to capitalize or destroy them. It is as untrue to contend that public opinion is manufactured as it is to contend that public opinion governs the agencies which mould it.
The public relations counsel must continually realize that there are always these limitations to his effectiveness.
The very “leaders,” men who have been selected from the mass to “lead the nation,” live with their ears to the ground for every slight rumbling of public sentiment. Preachers, acknowledged to be the ethical leaders of their flocks, express obedience to public opinion.
The critics who hold these extreme points of view about public opinion have too easily confused cause and effect. The sympathy between the orator and his audience is not one which the orator can create. He can intensify it, or by tactless speaking he can dissipate it, but he cannot manufacture it from thin air.
Margaret Sanger, a leader in the fight for education on birth control, will evoke enthusiasm when she addresses an audience that approves of her sentiments. When, however, she injects her point of view into groups that have a preconceived aversion to them, she is in danger of abuse, if not of actual physical violence. Likewise, a man who would talk of prison reform at a time when the public is aroused by an unwonted crime wave will find little response. On the other hand, when Madam Curie, co-discoverer of radium, came to America, she found a country that was prepared to meet her because of intensive effort on the part of a large radium corporation and a committee of women formed by Marie B. Meloney, to apprise the public of the importance of her visit. Had she come two years sooner, she might have been ignored save by a few scientists.
A historic incident illustrative of the interaction between a leader and a public is that of the sudden turn in the affairs of Rear Admiral Dewey. The idol of the Spanish American War, he nevertheless alienated popular affection by giving to his wife a house which had been presented to him by an admiring public. For some reason the public failed to sympathize with Admiral Dewey’s own undoubtedly sound and worthy reasons.
To say, therefore, as some persons have said at great length and with considerable vehemence, that the public relations counsel is responsible for public opinion, is not true. The public relations counsel is not needed to persuade people to standardize their points of view or to persist in their established beliefs. The established point of view becomes established by satisfying some real or assumed human need.
In common with the scenario writer, the preacher, the statesman, the dramatist, the public relations counsel, has his share in making up the mind of the public. The public quite as truly makes up the mind of the journalist, the pamphleteer, the scenario writer, the preacher and the statesman. The main direction of the public mind is often irrevocably set for its leaders.
Hendrik Van Loon, in his “Story of Mankind,” paints a picture of the action and interaction between Napoleon the Great and his public in a way that might well have been made to illustrate our point. When Napoleon led the public truly in the direction towards which it was headed, that is, towards democracy and equality, he was its successful leader and its idol, says Van Loon. When in the latter part of his career he turned back to a goal which the public had discarded and was eager to forget, that is, Bourbonism, Napoleon met with irresistible defeat.
“Damaged Goods” was able to make the American public accept the word “syphilis” because the counsel on public relations projected the doctrine of sex hygiene through those groups and sections of the public which were prepared to work with him.
Public opinion is the resultant of the interaction between two forces.
This may help us to see with greater clarity the position the public relations counsel holds in relation to the world at large, and what the factors are with which he is concerned and by which he accomplishes his work.
We have gone somewhat elaborately into the fundamental equipment of the individual mind and its relation to the group mind because the public relations counsel in his work in these fields must constantly call upon his knowledge of individual and group psychology. The public relations counsel can come forward, first, as the representative of established things when their security is shaken, or when they desire greater power; and second, as the representative of the group which is struggling to establish itself.
Mr. Lippmann says propaganda is dependent upon censorship. From my point of view the precise reverse is more nearly true. Propaganda is a purposeful, directed effort to overcome censorship--the censorship of the group mind and the herd reaction.
The average citizen is the world’s most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts. His own “logic-proof compartments,” his own absolutism are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction.
The training of the public relations counsel permits him to step out of his own group to look at a particular problem with the eyes of an impartial observer and to utilize his knowledge of the individual and the group mind to project his clients’ point of view.