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Propaganda, Edward Bernays, 1928 - ch 7
CHAPTER VII
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WOMEN'S ACTIVITIES AND PROPAGANDA
[audio mp3 of this chapter]
WOMEN in contemporary America have achieved a legal equality
with men. This does not mean that their activities are identical with
those of men. Women in the mass still have special interests and
activities in addition to their economic pursuits and vocational
interests.
Women's most obvious influence is exerted when they are
organized and armed with the weapon of propaganda. So organized and
armed they have made their influence felt on city councils, state
legislatures, and national congresses, upon executives, upon political
campaigns and upon public opinion generally, both local and national.
In politics, the American women to-day occupy a much more
important position, from the standpoint of their influence, in their
organized groups than from the standpoint of the leadership they have
acquired in actual political positions or in actual office holding.
The professional woman politician has had, up to the present, not much
influence, nor do women generally regard her as being the most
important element in question. Ma Ferguson, after all, was simply a
woman in the home, a catspaw for a deposed husband; Nellie Ross, the
former Governor of Wyoming, is from all accounts hardly a leader of
statesmanship or public opinion.
If the suffrage campaign did nothing more, it showed the
possibilities of propaganda to achieve certain ends. This propaganda
to-day is being utilized by women to achieve their programs in
Washington and in the states. In Washington they are organized as the
Legislative Committee of Fourteen Women's Organizations, including the
League of Women Voters, the Young Women's Christian Association,
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union,
the Federation of Women's Clubs,
etc. These organizations map out a legislative program and then use
the modern technique of propaganda to make this legislative program
actually pass into the law of the land. Their accomplishments in the
field are various. They can justifiably take the credit for much
welfare legislation. The eight-hour day for women is theirs.
Undoubtedly prohibition and its enforcement are theirs, if they can be
considered an accomplishment.
So is the Shepard-Towner Bill which
stipulates support by the central government of maternity welfare in
the state governments. This bill would not have passed had it not been
for the political prescience and sagacity of women like Mrs. Vanderlip
and Mrs. Mitchell.
The Federal measures endorsed at the first convention of the
National League of Women Voters typify social welfare activities of
women's organizations. These covered such broad interests as child
welfare, education, the home and high prices, women in gainful
occupations, public health and morals, independent citizenship for
married women, and others.
To propagandize these principles, the National League of Women
Voters has published all types of literature, such as bulletins,
calendars, election information, has held a correspondence course on
government and conducted demonstration classes and citizenship
schools.
Possibly the effectiveness of women's organizations in American
politics to-day is due to two things: first, the training of a
professional class of executive secretaries or legislative secretaries
during the suffrage campaigns, where every device known to the
propagandist had to be used to regiment a recalcitrant majority;
secondly, the routing over into peacetime activities of the many
prominent women who were in the suffrage campaigns and who also
devoted themselves to the important drives and mass influence
movements during the war. Such women as Mrs. Frank Vanderlip, Alice
Ames Winter, Mrs. Henry Moskowitz, Mrs. Florence Kelley, Mrs. John
Blair, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, Doris Stevens, Alice Paul come to mind.
If I have seemed to concentrate on the accomplishments of women
in politics, it is because they afford a particularly striking example
of intelligent use of the new propaganda to secure attention and
acceptance of minority ideas. It is perhaps curiously appropriate that
the latest recruits to the political arena should recognize and make
use of the newest weapons of persuasion to offset any lack of
experience with what is somewhat euphemistically termed practical
politics. As an example of this new technique: Some years ago, the
Consumers' Committee of Women, fighting the "American valuation"
tariff, rented an empty store on Fifty-seventh Street in New York and
set up an exhibit of merchandise tagging each item with the current
price and the price it would cost if the tariff went through. Hundreds
of visitors to this shop rallied to the cause of the committee.
But there are also non-political fields in which women can make
and have made their influence felt for social ends, and in which they
have utilized the principle of group leadership in attaining the
desired objectives.
In the General Federation of Women's Clubs, there are 13,000
clubs. Broadly classified, they include civic and city clubs, mothers'
and homemakers' clubs, cultural clubs devoted to art, music or
literature, business and professional women's clubs, and general
women's clubs, which may embrace either civic or community phases, or
combine some of the other activities listed.
The woman's club is generally effective on behalf of health
education; in furthering appreciation of the fine arts; in sponsoring
legislation that affects the welfare of women and children; in
playground development and park improvement; in raising standards of
social or political morality; in homemaking. and home economics,
education and the like. In these fields, the woman's club concerns
itself with efforts that are not ordinarily covered by existing
agencies, and often both initiates and helps to further movements for
the good of the community.
A club interested principally in homemaking and the practical
arts can sponsor a cooking school for young brides and others. An
example of the keen interest of women in this field of education is
the cooking school recently conducted by the New York Herald Tribune,
which held its classes in Carnegie Hall, seating almost 3,000 persons.
For the several days of the cooking school, the hall was filled to
capacity, rivaling the drawing power of a McCormack or a Paderewski,
and refuting most dramatically the idea that women in large cities are
not interested in housewifery.
A movement for the serving of milk in public schools, or the
establishment of a baby health station at the department of health
will be an effort close to the heart of a club devoted to the interest
of mothers and child welfare.
A music club can broaden its sphere and be of service to the
community by cooperating with the local radio station in arranging
better musical programs. Fighting bad music can be as militant a
campaign and marshal as varied resources as any political battle.
An art club can be active in securing loan exhibitions for its
city. It can also arrange travelling exhibits of the art work of its
members or show the art work of schools or universities.
A literary club may step out of its charmed circle of lectures
and literary lions and take a definite part in the educational life of
the community. It can sponsor, for instance, a competition in the
public schools for the best essay on the history of the city, or on
the life of its most famous son.
Over and above the particular object for which the woman's club
may have been constituted, it commonly stands ready to initiate or
help any movement which has for its object a distinct public good in
the community. More important, it constitutes an organized channel
through which women can make themselves felt as a definite part of
public opinion.
Just as women supplement men in private life, so they will
supplement men in public life by concentrating their organized efforts
on those objects which men are likely to ignore. There is a tremendous
field for women as active protagonists of new ideas and new methods of
political and social housekeeping. When organized and conscious of
their power to influence their surroundings, women can use their newly
acquired freedom in a great many ways to mold the world into a better
place to live in.
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