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Executive Leadership and the Growth of Propaganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Harold W. Stoke
Harold W. Stoke
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

The results which are likely to flow from any political change are extremely difficult to predict. It would have been impossible a generation ago to foresee that the gradual shift, in democratic as well as totalitarian states, of the political center of gravity from the legislature to the executive would create a new instrument of political power. That instrument is official publicity, or, more bluntly, governmental propaganda. It is suggested here that the tremendous growth in the publicity activities of modern governments is a direct consequence of the continued absorption by the executive of a larger degree of legislative initiative and power. Indeed, it seems highly probable that the development of the administrative bureaucracy as a source of policy and law will result, if it has not already done so, in making propaganda an indispensable instrument of government, with profound implications for traditional democratic processes.

Type
Public Administration
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , June 1941 , pp. 490 - 500
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1941

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References

1 These conventions of government by consent have been excellently crystallized in E. P. Herring, The Politics of Democracy, Chaps. 20, 21.

2 Witte, E. E., The Preparation of Proposed Legislative Measures by Administrative Departments (1937), p. 49.Google Scholar

3 The chartering of the Surplus Commodity Corporation by the Secretary of Agriculture and the inauguration of the Food Stamp Plan by administrative order are examples.

4 Feb. 8, 1941.

5 For example, the executive order establishing the divisions of the Executive Office of the President provides that there shall be established “in the event of a national emergency, or threat of a national emergency, such office for emergency management as the President shall determine.” Executive Order, No. 8248, Sept. 9, 1939.

6 For a general survey of legislation showing the nature and range of delegated authority to administrative officers, perhaps the most useful brief source is: Summary of Major Legislation, and of Federal Court Decisions on its Constitutionality, 1933–1940. Sen. Doc. 187, 76th Cong., 3rd Sess., 1940.

7 Roos, Charles Frederick, N.R.A. Economic Planning (1937), pp. 50–54.Google Scholar “Within less than a month after the recovery bill had been introduced, Congress had passed and the President had signed what he termed ‘probably … the most important and far-reaching legislation ever enacted by the American Congress’.” Ibid., p. 53. That there were those who were conscious of the inadequate popular and legislative consideration of the bill can be seen from the following letter from Alexander Sachs to General Hugh Johnson, May 20, 1933: “I submit it is not too late to re-think or to think for the first time what is really needed and how it can practically be secured. I fear, and fear profoundly, that the present device that has emerged from the many authors who have not reached a common basis is too intellectually muddled to produce codes that would work in practice or stand up in the courts when challenged. The danger is that the codes that will be rushed through will be like economic nebulae or chaos…. There is no substitute for hard thought and coordinated competence, for rigorous determination of objectives and critical construction; without these, wholesale planning is worse than no planning.” Ibid., p. 54.

8 “The Blue Eagle from Egg to Earth,” Saturday Evening Post, Feb. 2, 1935, p. 84.

9 While the Department has been skillful in its publicity, it has never tried to conceal the fact that its policies were administratively conceived and that it intended to secure their adoption. The following statements are representative of the general attitude. “Even before the A.A.A. was passed, the Department was laying the groundwork for an intensive, nation-wide program of education in economic planning.” Report of the Director of Information, 1933, p. 1. “It [Departmental publicity] is propaganda in the sense that the A.A.A., with full respect for the facts, still gives to the farmers an extensive presentation of one course of action as being more desirable than others. The process involves picking and choosing as between sets of facts, placing more emphasis upon some than upon others according to a judgment of their relative importance. Thus it does involve a departure from the objective attitude. It involves active support of a positive plan to improve the economic condition of agriculture.” Agricultural Adjustment, 1937–38, pp. 238–239.

10 America Must Choose, p. 32.

11 It is interesting to notice what is said in the Annual Report of the Public Printer, 1938, p. 21, regarding these departmental duplicating plants. “I reported to Congress last year that we were making every effort to limit the work done in the departments on their so-called duplicating equipment because we considered it a direct violation of the law which requires all printing be done at the Government Printing Office. Through the department printing plants, the departments are enabled to put out more printing than that authorized by Congress, using appropriations made for purposes other than printing to operate their so-called duplicating plants.”

12 It is virtually impossible to get a complete account of the publicity activities of a single agency, much less of the federal government as a whole. This is no doubt due to the magnitude, variety, and recency of such activities and to the lack of clear accounting categories for such work. Another difficulty may be due to a statute, still unrepealed [38 Stat. L. 212, Oct. 22, 1913] which forbids the hiring of publicity experts. Some agencies have been specifically authorized by law to carry on informational services, but the shadow of this act still hangs over much of the publicity work done by governmental organizations.

The best study of the publicity work of the federal government as a whole is that by McCamy, James L., Government Publicity (Chicago, 1939).Google Scholar There are some articles of importance in various numbers of the Public Opinion Quarterly. Most of the data cited here with reference to the Department of Agriculture are taken from the Senate Committee Report on Library, Information and Statistical Services, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., June, 1937, and Reports of the Director of Information, the Department of Agriculture, 1932 ff. There is an interesting article by Harding, T. Swann, “The Informational Techniques of the Department of Agriculture,” in Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 1, pp. 83–96, Jan., 1937CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and another by Steadman, Alfred D., “Public Information and the Preservation of Democracy,” in the Agricultural Yearbook for 1940, pp. 1075–1080.Google ScholarThe Hearings on Agricultural Appropriations f or 1940 contains a review of the Department's publicity work, pp. 116 ff.

13 Cf. McCamy, James L., “Variety in the Growth of Federal Publicity,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Apr., 1939, p. 389.Google Scholar This leaves out of account the publicity work of the various defense commissions.

14 Based upon his experiences as an administrator, the observations of Landis, James M., in The Administrative Process, pp. 62–63Google Scholar, are of particular interest: “One factor that has received little attention from students of government is the need for the administration to give adequate and effective publicity to its achievements. In the field of policy determination, effective publicizing of the policy and of the reasons that underlie it is essential. Only in this way can policy achieve the active or, at least, the tacit acceptance of the industrial group affected…. Thus, if the pre vailing political atmosphere is dominated by the ‘big stick,’ the government of the day expects of the administrative not merely heat and vigor but even more a show of heat and vigor. The big stick must be shaken by many hands, legislative, execu tive, and administrative. Hence the initiation of administrative action may be pre ceded by all the fanfare that public relations' counsel can muster.”

15 Consider the implications of the title of an article by Ascher, Charles S., “Federal Housing Symbols Are Tiresome,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 1, pp. 110–112 (Jan., 1937).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The anxieties of the publicity experts are amusingly illustrated by the care with which, in an age of “alphabetical agencies,” the Social Security Board avoids the use of its initials because of the similarity to a popular American epithet. See McCamy, op. cit., p. 153.

16 The observations of the Special Committee on Administrative Law of the American Bar Association are interesting. “In a democracy, legislation is bound to be a partisan process. It is so in Congress, and there is no occasion to be shocked that it is so of officials in the executive departments and the independent agencies to which legislative powers have been delegated.” Proceedings, 1936, p. 735.

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