Advertising on Trial: Consumer Activism and Corporate Public Relations in the 1930s

Notes

Notes Preface 1. The total advertising expenditures on all media in 2003,according to Advertising Age, was $245.48 billion; see Advertising Age, Fact Pack 2005 Edition: A Supplement to Advertising Age 3rd Annual Guide to Advertising & Marketing (NewYork: Advertising Age, 2005), 14 (www.adage.com/images/random/FactPack2005.pdf; accessed July 21, 2005).Although they do not agree about the effects,scholars from all political camps concur that people are exposed to a massive amount of advertising messages on a daily basis; see, for example, Matthew P. McAllister, The Commercialization of American Culture: New Advertising Control and Democratic Media (Thousand Oaks,Calif.: Sage Publications, 1996), 38; Michael Dawson, The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), chap. 6; and James B. Twitchell, Adcult U.S.A.: The Triumph of Advertising in American Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 2. For a discussion of the tension between advertising and democratic principles, see Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Robert W. McChesney, Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy (NewYork: Seven Stories Press, 1997); and Robert W. McChesney, The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the Twenty-First Century (NewYork: Monthly Review Press, 2004). For a general discussion of advertising influences in the lives of young children and teenagers, see Susan Linn, Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood (New York: New Press, 2004); and Alissa Quart, Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers (New York: Perseus, 2003). 2. Stuart Elliot, “A Survey of Consumer Attitudes Reveals the Depth of the Challenge that the Agencies Face,” New York Times, sec. C, April 14, 2004, 8. 3. Twitchell, Adcult U.S.A., 1. 4. Robert W. McChesney, Telecommunication, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928–1935 (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1993). For an account of the revived movement to challenge corporate media domination , see McChesney, The Problem of the Media, chap. 7. 5. For a discussion of Edward L. Bernays’s PR strategies and philosophies, see Edward L. Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923; repr., New York: Liveright, 1961); Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda (New York: Liveright, 1928); Stuart Ewen, PR! The Social History of Spin (NewYork: Basic Books,1996),163–73; andAlan R.Raucher, Public Relations and Business, 1900–1929 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), 126–31. 6. John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Trust Us, We’re Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2001), 17–22; Fraser P. Seitel, The Practice of Public Relations (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004), 330. 7. For an excellent discussion of women’s contributions to the 1930s consumer movement, see Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). 8. Thorstein Veblen, The Engineer and the Price System (1921; repr., New York: Viking Press, 1938); Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America (1923; repr., New York:Viking Press, 1954); Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966), 115–31. Chapter 1: The Rise of a Corporate Culture 1. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (1955; repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1960), 174. 2. For a discussion of advertising’s role in creating national markets, see Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989); Richard S. Tedlow, New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America (New York: Basic Books, 1990); and Daniel Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising (New York: Basic Books, 1983), chap. 2. 3. For a discussion of the rise of corporations in America, see William G. Roy, Socializing Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). 4. Naomi Lamoreaux,The Great Merger Movement in American Business,1885–1904 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 1. 5. Ibid., 108; Richard L. McCormick, “The Discovery that Business Corrupts Politics : A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism,” American Historical Review 86, no. 2 (April 1981): 247–74. 6. Lamoreaux, Great Merger Movement, 3. 7. The classic statements remain Thorstein Veblen, The Engineers and the Price 210 . notes to pages ix–4 System (1921; repr., New York: Viking...