Ivy Ledbetter Lee and the Roots of PR

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Not too
long ago, we had an episode on Ida tar Bell.
We particularly talked about her investigative reporting into John D.

(00:24):
Rockefeller and Standard Oil, and something we mentioned in that
episode is that Rockefeller later on tried to revise his
public image from ruthless Robert Baron to philanthropist and family man,
and he did that with the help of a man
named Ivy Ledbetter Lee. Ivy Lee was one of the

(00:44):
founders of the fields of public relations and crisis communications,
although for a lot of folks I think the more
familiar name is probably Edward Burnet's. Some of this maybe
because Berne's career was longer and more recent. Ivy Lee
was the older of the two of them by only
about fifteen years, but he died in nineteen thirty four,

(01:05):
while Berne's lived all the way until. Berne's is also
a lot more self promotional, which may play into it too,
Like we've had listener requests for Edward Burnet's but not
really for Ivy Lee. Some people might also point to
the scandals that unfolded at the end of Lee's career
is a reason why he's not as well known today

(01:26):
we will be talking about their scandals, but honestly, big
chunks of Bernet's career we're pretty scandalous also, So I mean,
I feel like scandal off and makes people more memorable,
so that one doesn't totally hold water for Yeah, well,
I I think in particular, well, we were talking more
about the end of Lee's career of course at the

(01:47):
end of the episode, but there are parts of it
that I can kind of see why if you are
in the field of public relations, you might not want
to talk about that as part of the world of
one of the founders of your feet field. So anyway,
even though Edward Berne's probably has more general name recognition today,
Ivy Lee's approach to public relations was really revolutionary for

(02:10):
the time, and he helped establish a lot of the
practices that still exist in the field today. And the
work that he did is a publicist continues to have
a lot of influence on the world that we're living
in now. So Ivy led Better Lee was born on
July six, eighteen seventy seven, in Cedartown, Georgia. He was
the oldest of six children born to the Reverend James

(02:30):
Wideman Lee, who was a Methodist minister, and Emma you
Falla led Better. Ivy grew up in Atlanta and St. Louis,
as his father was transferred among various Methodist churches in
those two cities. Ivy Lee studied at Emory College for
two years before transferring to Princeton, and at Princeton, one
of his mentors was future US President Woodrow Wilson. Lee

(02:53):
studied economics, and one of his yearbooks described him this way, quote,
what he doesn't know about trusts is not worth knowing.
Lee worked for the campus newspapers at both schools, and
as a football correspondent for other college and university newspapers.
He also helped pay for school as a campus correspondent
for newspapers all over the Northeastern US and eventually for

(03:16):
the Associated Press. He reported several exclusive stories thanks to
former President Grover Cleveland, who had retired to Princeton. This
included getting a statement from Cleveland after the U S s.
Maine exploded in Havannah Harbor in That was also the
year that Lee graduated from Princeton with honors. He used

(03:38):
a five hundred dollar debate prize to pay for some
time at Harvard Law School, but he used up that
money pretty quickly. After that, he moved to New York
and from n o three he worked as a journalist
for several New York newspapers, and he used some of
his income from that to study political science at Columbia University.

(03:59):
During those years in New York, he also married Cornelia
Bartlett Bigelow, and they went on to have three children.
Those were Alice, James the Second and Ivy Jr. But
as is the case today, there wasn't a lot of
money in reporting, especially for people who were just starting
their careers, so in nineteen o three Lee decided to

(04:19):
go into public relations. Of course, people have been using
information to try to influence people's opinions and perceptions for
pretty much as long as there have been societies, but
this was in the earliest years of public relations as
a field. The term public relations to describe relationships between

(04:39):
organizations or influential people in the public and the effective
management of those relationships, was first used in writing in
Lee used a range of terms to describe what he did,
including publicity, which has a slightly different connotation today. Lee
started out as publicity manager for the New York Citizens Union,

(05:00):
backing the re election campaign of Mayor Seth Low. The
Citizens Union was trying to unseat New York's immensely powerful
Tammany Hall political machine. Although Low had managed to defeat
the Tammany candidate in the earlier election, this time around
he was defeated. After this, Lee went to work for

(05:20):
the Democratic National Committee. During the four presidential campaign, he
represented Alton B. Parker in his race against the incumbent
Theodore Roosevelt. Of course, Parker lost this election as well,
although Lee's candidate lost both elections. During these campaigns, he
started developing techniques that would become a huge part of

(05:42):
his career. For example, on the Low campaign, he wrote
a book called City for the People, The best administration
New York ever had. This book explained the various reforms
that Low had implemented, as well as the many scandals
of his predecessor, Tammany politician Robert A. And Wick. It
used clear, straightforward language, while also using lots of bold

(06:05):
type underlines and i catching headlines to emphasize the points
of the book. Similarly, during the Parker campaign, Lee and
his colleague George Parker, who was no relation to the candidate,
created a two sided card. This was headlined the President's
dream of war on one side and Judge Parker's plea

(06:26):
for peace on the other. The war side quoted Roosevelt quote,
if we ever grow to regard peace as a permanent condition,
and feel that we can afford to let the keen, fearless,
virile qualities of heart and mind and body sink into disuse,
we will prepare the way for inevitable and shameful disaster

(06:46):
in the future. Then the peace side had a quote
from Parker that began quote, the display of great military
armaments may please the eye, and for the moment excite
the pride of the citizen, but it cannot bring to
the country the brains, brawn, and muscle of a single immigrant,
nor reduce the investment here of a dollar of capital.

(07:08):
After the presidential campaign was over, Ivy Lee and George
Parker started one of the first formal pr firms in
the US. In nineteen o six, Lee wrote a declaration
of principles which read, in part quote, this is not
a secret press bureau. All our work is done in
the open. We aim to supply news. This is not
an advertising agency. If you think any of our matter

(07:31):
ought properly, go to your business office, do not use it.
Our matter is accurate. Further details on any subject treated
will be supplied promptly, and any editor will be assisted
most cheerfully in verifying directly any statement of fact in brief.
Our plan is frankly and openly on behalf of business

(07:51):
concerns and public institutions to supply the press and public
of the United States prompt and accurate information concerning subjects
which it is of value and interest to the public
to know about. I send out only matter, every detail
of which I am willing to assist any editor in verifying.
For himself. Lee didn't necessarily always live up to these

(08:15):
ideals in terms of things like transparency and accuracy. We
will get to that over time. He also recognized that
there were some limits to what he could fix for
his clients if their behavior was truly egregious, So, at
least to an extent, he tried to counsel his clients
to do better, and then he publicized those improvements to

(08:36):
try to gain or regain the public's trust. A lot
of this sounds very basic today, but at the time
it was groundbreaking. By the late nineteenth century, the relationship
between big businesses and the public was broadly speaking, not good.
In eight two, a reporter from the New York Times
was asking railroad magnet William H. Vanderbilt about possible fair

(08:59):
reduction and express service. When Vanderbilt seemed to be complaining
about how little money he made off of passengers as
compared to freight service, the reporter asked, quote, but don't
you run it for the public benefit, and Vanderbilt answered
the public be damned. Vanderbilt later said his comments had
been misreported and misrepresented, but to a lot of the

(09:21):
American public, that quote really summed up the worldview of
industries and industrialists. And then, on top of that perception
that industries just did not care about the public, a
lot of businesses routinely refused to speak to reporters. Instead,
they would try to keep any accidents or other incidents
from becoming public knowledge. So, just as an example, if

(09:44):
passengers were killed in a railroad accident, the railroad would
usually try to cover it up. They would refuse to
give interviews bar reporters from the accident site, maybe even
bribe them to keep quiet with some free train tickets.
So we're gonna get into the specifics of how Lee
worked with his clients after we pause for a sponsor break.

(10:14):
Ivy Lee's public relations career developed towards the end of
the Progressive era in the United States, and it was
influenced by that era's ideals of civic engagement and corporate accountability.
It was also influenced by his upbringing as the son
of a Methodist minister and his father's approach to his ministry,
specifically that included things like trying to bridge the gulf

(10:38):
between evolutionists and creationists, and a proposal that Ivy's father
made to create a cathedral of cooperation in Atlanta that
was meant to bring together Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. At
the same time, though, Ivy Lee was usually working on
behalf of businesses and industries and austrialists, including some of

(11:02):
the most maligned industries in the United States, like the
coal industry. In nineteen o six, George F. Bear, president
of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, hiredly to represent the
anthracite coal industry. The railroad and coal industries were deeply connected,
and a few years earlier, during the coal strike of

(11:23):
nineteen o two, the industries had followed their typical pattern
of refusing to talk to reporters. Meanwhile, labor organizers and
striking workers had happily given interviews, garnering a lot of
sympathy as they talked very candidly about low pay, long hours,
and difficult and dangerous working conditions. So when another strike

(11:45):
was developing in nineteen o six, Bear and his colleagues
wanted to have somebody on their side, and that someone
was Ivy Lee. One of his first steps was to
publicly assure the press that the coal operators would be
providing them with all possible information. That declaration of principles
that we read before the break was something he sent

(12:06):
to newspapers as part of Lee's work with the coal mines.
Soon he was also working for the railroads. On October
nineteen o six, a train ran off a drawbridge outside
of Atlantic City, New Jersey, and more than fifty people drowned.
Lee issued a statement to the press which began quote,
on account of the difficulty of raising the trucks of

(12:28):
the cars out of the water, the Railroad officials have
not been able to discover the cause of the accident.
They have ascertained, however, that there was no defect in
either the drawbridge or its mechanism to cause the derailment.
The bridge, both stationary and movable parts, is of the
most approved modern type. This is usually cited as the

(12:50):
first modern press release. The rest of this release offered
a lot of reassurances that the company was working to
raise the wrecked car ours from the water and to
conduct a thorough investigation. The New York Times printed this
release without any kind of alteration, without any analysis or
questioning of its contents. That was pretty revolutionary that somebody

(13:14):
could just send a statement on behalf of the company
and it would just be printed and whole cloth went
right to print. Uh. In addition to this release, Lee
also advised railroad officials to be available to the press
with industry experts on hand. He arranged for reporters to
travel to the accident site by train paid for by
the company. In spite of this releases reassurances, though the

(13:38):
likely cause of this accident was a problem with the
drawbridge mechanism, which had not reconnected itself properly after the
last time the bridge had opened. Lee also tried to
improve the railroad industry's public image. Beyond just dealing with
the aftermath of specific accidents. He encouraged the railroads to
make safety improvements and to increase employees pay, at least

(14:02):
to the extent that it would make a favorable impression
on the public. He also provided them with positive media coverage.
For example, he wrote an article for Moody's in nineteen
o seven that detailed all kinds of philanthropic efforts, from
creating public parks to establishing scholarship funds. Railroads really had
funded all these projects, but Lee didn't disclose that they

(14:26):
had also paid him to write the article. Lee's influence
trickled through the railroad industry, and in nineteen o eight
he became part of the Pennsylvania Railroads Publicity Bureau. Eventually
he became an executive assistant to the railroad president, where
he tried to have a positive influence on the railroads policies.
His pr efforts included things like getting the public to

(14:49):
accept an increase in fares, which is something he also
did for the New York City Subway in nineteen ten.
Ivy Lee took a three year break from public relations,
making a brief foray into international investment banking that was
something he thought was going to have an increasing influence
on society. He went to England to open up investment

(15:10):
offices in London and then Paris in Berlin, and he
lectured at the London School of Economics in nineteen eleven
and nineteen twelve, but he ultimately returned to the US
and to his work as a publicist. A lot of
Lee's pr work so far had involved industries that were
inherently pretty disliked and distrusted by a lot of the

(15:30):
American public, But in nineteen fourteen, he took on a
job that would be particularly controversial for a family that
was deeply reviled. The previous year, about ten thousand miners
in Colorado had gone on strike in an effort to
get better pay and working conditions and recognition of their
union through the United Mine Workers of America. The Colorado

(15:54):
Fuel and Iron Company or cf and I had evicted
the striking workers from the company towns where they lived,
and then the striking workers had started living in tense cities.
Months later, on April nineteenth, nineteen fourteen, the Colorado National
Guard and private security surrounded one of these camps in Ludlow, Colorado,

(16:15):
and for unclear reasons, they opened fire. Twenty Five people
were killed, including two women and eleven children who had
been sheltering in a pit dug under the tents. This
sparked ten days of violence in which about fifty people died.
This was part of a long and violent labor uprising
known as the Colorado Coalfield War. John D. Rockefeller Jr.

(16:39):
Owned about forty of the CF and I, and the
Rockefeller family already had a reputation for ruthlessness, something we
talked about in that earlier episode on Ida Tarbell. So
after this John Jr. Became the public's biggest target. The
union and the strike workers already had their own PR team,

(17:03):
who popularized the name Ludlow Massacre for the violence of
April nineteen. Newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane was a friend of
Rockefeller's and told him he knew somebody who could help.
That somebody was Ivy Lee. So Lee embarked on a
comprehensive public relations plan on behalf of Rockefeller and the
c F and I. In addition to other Mainling's interviews

(17:27):
and newspaper and magazine articles. This campaign focused on a
series of nineteen printed bulletins. These were later compiled into
a collection called The Struggle in Colorado for Industrial Freedom. Yeah,
they're they're presented as a series one in series two,
and they have a whole lot of overlap between them
and those two collections. These bulletin's laid out the mining

(17:51):
industries views from a number of angles. Some of them
outlined the same kinds of anti union arguments that still
circulate today, stuff like the United Mine Workers being an
outside organization that was acting against the interest of the
workers themselves, that most of the workers didn't want to
be in the union, and that mine workers in Colorado

(18:12):
were paid more than mine workers in any other state
and therefore they did not need a union. Here is
a quote as an example quote, the fight of the
Colorado coal mine managers is not against union labor. The
principle of collective bargaining is not at stake. The struggle
in Colorado was against the domination of a particular organization,

(18:34):
the United Mine Workers of America. It's sort of the
we don't mind if our workers unionized, just not that union.
And some of the information in these bulletins was factual
on the surface, but it was presented in a deceptive way.
One is called how Colorado Editors view the coal strike.
This bulletin acknowledged that some of the striking workers demands

(18:56):
were things they were entitled to under Colorado law, and
that the law should be upheld, but it also argued
that they already made enough money and they should drop
their demand for the union to be recognized. It's not
mentioned that the statements were gathered at a conference where
only fourteen of the states more than three hundred editors
were present, and that the eleven who had signed a

(19:19):
report all worked for newspapers that were owned by the
mining companies. Although Lee seems to have only printed things
that he thought were true, about half of these bulletins
had factual issues. Especially before he personally traveled to Colorado
to talk to people, He got most of his information
from mining operators, and he seems to have taken what

(19:41):
they said at face value. His most egregious error was
reporting the annual salary of several workers and organizers as
their salaries for just nine weeks, making it look like
they made a whole lot more money than they made
which suggested there was some kind of grift going on,
and although he issued a correction on that the uncorrected

(20:03):
numbers were really widely circulated. One of the bulletins also
stressed that the women and children who had been killed
while taking shelter in the pit had burned or suffocated
in a fire that was caused by an overturned stove
and not by being shot. The implication here is that
they died because of their own carelessness. This did not

(20:25):
acknowledge that the stove had been overturned while the camp
was surrounded and being fired upon. Multiple articles floating around
about Ivy Lee Today also claimed that he just made
up a lot of the information and these bulletins, including
saying that he accused labor organizer Mother Jones of running
a brothel. If he did say this, it was somewhere

(20:48):
other than in these bulletins, and it was also probably
something that somebody from the company told him, not something
he just made up himself. Unfounded allegations that Mother Jones
had previously run a brothel or had otherwise done sex
work date back to at least nineteen o four, and
a gossip magazine called Polly pry One of Lee's bulletin's

(21:12):
was devoted to mother Jones, though, and it included this
all caps statement quote, I confidently believe that most of
the murders and other acts of violent crime committed in
the strike region have been inspired by this woman's incendiary utterances.
I feel like incendiary Utterances would be a great name

(21:32):
for an autobiography um This strike ended unsuccessfully from the
miners point of view. In December of nineteen fourteen, their
union was not recognized and their demands were not met.
Shortly thereafter, Ivy Lee was called to defend his work
before the U. S Commission on Industrial Relations. This was

(21:53):
one of many appearances he made before congressional committees, commissions,
and regulatory agencies that were investigating his role in possible wrongdoing.
Although many of the questions he was asked implied that
he had been paid to lie on behalf of the company,
he insisted that everything he had done was in good
faith and that any errors brought to his attention were

(22:15):
corrected as quickly as he could. This was the beginning
of years of work with the Rockefeller family, and we
will talk about that and other parts of his later career.
After another quick sponsor break. After the Colorado mind strike

(22:38):
was over, ivy Lee was elected director of the c
f and I. In nineteen fifteen, he published a book
called Human Nature and the Railroads, which explored various problems
within the railroad industry and how those problems might be addressed,
as well as how to use crowd psychology to change
public perceptions about the industry. That same year, he took

(23:01):
a staff position as one of John D. Rockefeller's seniors advisers.
As we have said before, the public as a whole
was not a fan of the Rockefeller's or of John
Senior in particular. Ivy Lean knew that it would not
change public opinion if he wrote a bunch of articles
telling Rockefeller's side of the story on how he became

(23:22):
the wealthiest man in the United States. Instead, he encouraged
Rockefeller to do even more philanthropy and to start publicizing it,
something that Rockefeller didn't want to do because he thought
that that was course and braggy. Lee encouraged Rockefeller to
fund the building of Rockefeller Center and the restoration of
Colonial Williamsburg. He wrote articles about Rockefeller's efforts to eradicate

(23:46):
hookworm disease. He invited newsreel reporters to come to the
Rockefeller home to see John Senior at family birthday celebrations
and handing out dimes to children, things that made him
seem human and not like a corporate monster. Right. Lee
also tried to arrange for an authorized biography to be written.

(24:08):
I started out by scheduling a round of golf with
Rockefeller and journalists William O. Engliss, and that first golf
game became an article called playing a Round of Golf
with John B. Rockefeller, one of many humanizing articles about
Rockefeller's golf games. After about ten more years of playing golf,
English did write a biography, but early readers of it

(24:30):
suggested that it was just too flattering to be taken seriously,
so they didn't wind up printing it. Then it eventually,
some years down the road, get an authorized biography done,
but at that point Ivy Lee had passed away and
was not part of the story. In nineteen sixteen, Lee
established a new PR firm, one that evolved over a
series of names and partners. Over the next few years,

(24:52):
he took on increasingly high profile clients, many of which
had troubling histories that needed to be addressed include eating Phelps, Dodge,
armor meats, Anaconda steel, and standard oil, and some would
become more troubling later on, like American tobacco. Perhaps unsurprisingly
given his association with the Rockefellers Rockefeller having made a

(25:16):
lot of his money by consolidating industries, Lee also advocated
for collaboration among businesses rather than competition between them. He
helped establish multiple institutes and industrial groups that were meant
to advocate on behalf of entire industries, including the American
Petroleum Institute, the International Sugar Council, and the Cotton Yarn Association.

(25:40):
Although he became really one of the go to people
for industrial PR work, he also had some prominent detractors.
Carl Sandberg called him poison Ivy Lee, and that was
a name that was then picked up by Upton Sinclair.
During World War One, Ivy Lee took a full time,
unpaid position for the American Red Cross to increase the

(26:01):
public's awareness of the Red Cross and its work, and
to use the Red Cross as a source of positive
PR for the United States and its allies. Lee tried
to resign from this position in nineteen eighteen, citing quote
certain mathematical equations I am compelled to face, but he
was convinced to stay until the end of the war.

(26:21):
Other pro bono work during his career included the United
Hospital Fund of New York, the Henry Street Settlement, the
Episcopal Pension Fund, and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.
After World War One was over, Lee was hired by
the Transatlantic Passenger Conference to promote international travel by sea
and to help that industry recover from the sinking of

(26:43):
both the Titanic and the Lusitania. He also worked to
improve americans opinions of Europe as a vacation destination as
Europe recovered from the war. A lot of things people
had heard about Europe at that point had been returning
soldiers telling about that they had seen these war torn countries.

(27:03):
Another client was motion picture production and distribution company Famous
Players Laski, whose reputation was suffering due to charges of
unfair business practices and various Hollywood scandals. We talked about
the business practices in our two partern on the Paramount
decrees in and the scandals in our episode on the
Murder of William Desmond Taylor. Lee wasn't directly involved with

(27:27):
the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association, or the adoption
of the Haze Code, but it did grow out of
the approach that he was using with his film industry clients.
During his career, Lee also encouraged the Guggenheim family to
establish the Guggenheim Foundation. He promoted the field of aviation,
including arranging promotional tours for Richard E. Byrd after he

(27:51):
became the first person to fly over the North Pole
and Charles Lindbergh after his solo flight across the Atlantic.
Both of those tours were spat third by the Goggenheim Foundation.
Some of Lee's work in the nineteen twenties had an
international focus. He helped France, Poland and Romania get financing
from international financial institutions to help with their rebuilding effort,

(28:14):
using his PR methods to garner support. He was also
a founding member of the Council on Foreign Relations when
it was established in nine. He didn't stop working within
the US though, after the Battle of Blair Mountain. In one,
which is yet another previous episode of the podcast, he
once again worked on the side of the mining companies

(28:37):
try to repair their reputations. This included printing bulletins called
The Miners Lamp and Coal Fax, which included such articles
as company Stores Protect the mine Workers pocketbooks. That same year,
he also worked on behalf of General Mills predecessor Washburn Crosby,
promoting the character of Betty Crocker as a way to

(29:00):
sell baking ingredients. He helped develop the name and branding
for gold Medal Flower to imply that it had a
superior quality, and he worked with the company on a
serial campaign that stressed the importance of a hearty breakfast,
something we are still hearing today, sure are. He was
still working with the Rockefellers throughout all of this. In

(29:22):
the late nineteen twenties, he encouraged John D. Rockefeller Jr.
To fund the construction of Riverside Church. Its first pastor
was Henry Emerson Fostick, who had his own connection to
Ivy Lee. Lee had personally paid for the publishing and
distribution of fostics influential nine sermon titled Shall the Fundamentalists Win?

(29:45):
The sermon advocated for Christianity to be open minded, tolerant,
and intellectual, and Postick credited Lee's distribution of it with
it having had any impact at all. Lee also handled
the publicity for John Dy Cackefeller Junior's daughter in nineteen
twenty four, surrounding her wedding, including issuing a wedding invitation

(30:07):
to every major newspaper, establishing a press section at the church,
and specifying what reporters were and we're not allowed to
take pictures of and include in their stories. In nineteen
twenty five, Lee wrote one of the first books on
public relations, called Publicity Some of the Things It Is
and Is Not. He also published The Press Today in

(30:29):
ninety nine, and some of Lee's most controversial work took
place in the nineteen twenties and thirties. I feel like
a lot of what we've talked about has been controversial
so far, and now we're taking it to another level.
During his lifetime, he made five trips to Russia and
the Soviet Union, both before and after the Russian Revolution.

(30:51):
He wrote a book called USSR A World Enigma in
nineteen twenty seven, and then revised it into present day
Russia in nineteen the eight. Although he acknowledged that the
USSR was the dictatorship, his treatment of people like Joseph
Stalin was so favorable overall that critics accused Lee of

(31:11):
being on the Soviet payroll. He insisted that he was
not paid for any of this work, that he had
pursued it out of just a personal interest. He was
also a strong advocate for the US to acknowledge the
Soviet government and to open up trading relations. As a note,
Gareth Jones, the Welsh journalist we discussed in our episode

(31:32):
on the Whole of the more recently worked for Ivy Lee.
If Lee publicly revised his opinions on Russia or Stalin
after jones Is reporting, Tracy did not find that in
her research, Yeah, he even when they were traveling together.
It seems like Jones had a much clearer idea of

(31:52):
conditions that were affecting people than Lee, who had a
lot of really positive spin that did not talk so
much about problems with things like hunger and poverty. And
then in nine Lee started representing the American affiliate of
German chemical conglomerate I G. Farban. He was paid three

(32:15):
thousand to four thousand dollars a year to work with
companies like Aga Photo and Bear. But about three months
after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in nineteen thirty three,
Lee was put on a retainer of twenty five thousand
dollars a year to consult for I. G. Farban's German headquarters.

(32:36):
His son, James the Second, was also given a full
time position in Germany in support of this effort. Because
of his writing about Russia, people already thought Ivy Lee
was a propagandist for foreign governments, so it did not
take long before he was accused of distributing Nazi propaganda.
He was called to testify before the McCormick Dickstein Committee,

(32:58):
which was the earliest iteration of the House Committee on
Unamerican Activities. Lee testified in a closed session on May nine,
thirty four, and since he was in Europe during the
public hearings that followed that, his testimony was read into
the public record on July eleven. The New York Times

(33:19):
reported on this the next day under the headline quote
Ivy Lee as adviser to Nazis paid twenty five thousand
dollars by Die Trust. A lot of the English language
reporting at this point calls IG Farban the Die Trust.
That's basically what the name translates to. This ran next
to an article on the Night of the Long Knives

(33:39):
titled gring is blamed for Nazi killings. In his testimony,
Lee summed up his relationship with I. G. Farbin this
way quote, the directors of the company told me they
were very much concerned over the German relationships with the
United States and antagonism toward Germany in the United States.
They wanted advice as to those relations could be improved,

(34:02):
so they made an arrangement with me to give them
such advice. Lee insisted that he had not distributed any
German material of any kind in the United States and
that his role with ig Farban in Germany was an
advisory one. But he also talked about personally meeting with
Hitler and with Minister of Propaganda Joseph Garbo's and with

(34:24):
other Nazi party leaders. And he also made it clear
that his intent was that at least some of the
advice that he gave to ig Farban's leadership would be
passed along to the German government. Some writers, including biographer
ray Elden Hibert, have said that Lee hoped his work
with I. G. Farben would lead to Nazi Germany changing

(34:47):
its actual policies, but his testimony before the Congressional Committee
really did not suggest that it sounds more like he
was kind of telling Germany how to handle the US.
For example, quote, I have told them that they could
never in the world get the American people reconciled to
their treatment of the Jews, that it was just foreign
to the American mentality and can never be justified in

(35:09):
the American opinion, And there was no use trying. In
the second place. Anything that savored of Nazi propaganda in
this country was a mistake and ought not to be undertaken.
Although the New York Times article that we referenced largely
struck to quoting Lee's actual testimony, a lot of the
other news reporting about this at the time was really sensationalized.

(35:33):
A lot of it claimed that Lee was working as
a Nazi propagandist in the US, like giving Americans Nazi propaganda.
That is something that really wasn't supported by his statements
or by any evidence that was introduced in the hearings.
But people outside the news media were heavily critical of
him as well. It wasn't just a matter of sensationalized reporting.

(35:56):
Before meeting with Hitler, Lee contacted American and back that
are William Dodd as a courtesy and DoD described this
conversation this way in his notes quote Ivy Lee showed
himself at once a capitalist and an advocate for fascism.
He told stories of his fight for Russian recognition and
was disposed to claim credit for it. His sole aim

(36:19):
was to increase American business profits. Lee contacted Dot again
after the meeting with Hitler to update him on it,
and DoD observed a shift in Nazi communications after that point.
Writing of Gebel's quote, it was plain that he was
trying to apply the advice which Ivy Lee urged upon
him a month ago. Later on, Dodd described Lee as

(36:41):
quote the clever big business propagandist who has been trying
for a year or more to sell the Nazi regime
to the American public. So an important thing to note
here is that while many of the Nazi parties and I. G.
Farban's most egregious and horrifying acts were still to come
when all of this happened, and persecution and violence toward

(37:02):
Jewish people were already ongoing. It is possible that an
uninformed American who didn't have any ties to Germany or
to the Jewish community might have been ignorant of what
was happening in Germany. But Lee's career required him to
be knowledgeable and well read. The training program for new
associates at the PR firms that he established during his

(37:24):
career required them to read a broad range of newspapers
and periodicals from all over the world, all over the
political spectrum, and to travel broadly to expand their own knowledge,
so this is something he would have known. His congressional
testimony also makes it clear that he was aware of
international concerns that Germany was re arming itself in defiance

(37:48):
of the Treaty of Versailles, and he said that he
had quote sent suggestions as two points which should be
covered by responsible Germans, which would tend to make clear
to the American people what the attitude of Germany was
on the armament question. We do not know Whetherly would
have recanted this work in light of what happened later

(38:10):
when reporters found him on vacation at the thermal baths
in Boden, Germany, as this news broke contrary to his
own advice, he refused to give a statement, and then
he died of a brain tumor on November nine, four,
just four months after all of this became public. This
developed really suddenly. A month earlier, he had been at

(38:31):
a meeting with the executive board of the Pennsylvania Railroad
and during the meeting he had a brain hemorrhage and
could not remember who he was talking to. His doctor
suggested that the tumor had probably started to develop right
about the time he had come under fire for his
work with I. G. Farban. Yeah, there are some some
write ups on him a sort of a founder of

(38:52):
the field of public relations, that really try to give
him a pass on all this. They're like, he was
cleared of all charges of distributing propaganda. Sure he wasn't
distributing propaganda in the US, but he was definitely trying
to tell Nazi Germany like how to have a better
relationship with the United States, not really seeming to have

(39:16):
qualms about what was happening in Germany and how the
Nazi Party was treating its own people. Although the last
months of Lee's life had been marked by accusations of
anti Semitism and being a Nazi propagandist, and then also
a renewed focus on his most controversial pr jobs that

(39:38):
kind of resurfaced as part of that criticism he still
had his supporters. John D. Rockefeller Jr. Wrote a letter
to Lee's widow, Cornelia that's set in part quote from
the early days of my contact with your husband, it
became clear to me that his point of view was
the same as ours, that complete sincerity, honesty, and integrity

(39:58):
were the fundamental prince of holes, which regulated his daily
life and upon which his every action was based. What
he did for us in the Colorado situation, and in
the general relation of our family and business interest to
the public thereafter, was of greatest value. Lee's firm kept
representing the Rockefeller's until John D. Rockefeller Junior's death. There

(40:21):
are so many aspects of Lee's pr work that have
carried through until today. Some examples, multiple historians and climate
reporters have traced today's disinformation about the climate change crisis
back to groundwork that was laid by Ivy Lee. The
name Guggenheim is far more associated with art and philanthropy

(40:43):
than with the American smelting and Refining company. After Nelson A.
Rockefeller was elected governor of New York in night, Drew
Pearson of The Washington Post wrote that it never would
have happened had Ivy Lee not connected the Rockefeller name
to philanthropy and good works. So yeah, that is i'vey

(41:03):
led better Lee, who I have a lot of feelings about,
some of which I'm sure we'll talk about more in
Behind the Scene. Indeed, do you want to talk about
listener mail in the meantime? I do want to talk
about listener mail in the meantime. So we got an
email from a Purva who wrote and said, Hi, I

(41:24):
have a podcast about my birthtown in India, the side
of the biggest disaster you've never heard of, the bull
pall Gas tragedy. Here's the blurb. And then a Perva
sent the blurb that comes along with the podcast, which
is cows sometimes wander into graze in the grass surrounding
Union Carbide, an abandoned American pesticide factory in bull India.

(41:48):
More often than not, these cows end up dead, choking
on the same poison that suffocated ten thousand people on
December second. Uh And so this description of the podcast
goes on to described that it's the work of a
Provid dix It and a Purvouse childhood best friend, Molly mulroy,
and it's a seven part podcast called they knew which

(42:09):
way to run. UM. We get a lot of emails
about podcasts that people are launching, and we can't typically
talk about a ton of them on the show, but
I wanted to talk about this one in particular, UM
because I was nine when this happened, and I remember it,
I remember the news coverage of it. It is something
that has been on, like the listener submitted idealist, for

(42:31):
a long time, but it's also a bit more recent
than we normally talk about, and its recency and the
fact that there are a lot of people who survived
it who are still alive today sort of adds some
complexity to whether we could do it justice. UM. So
I was really, uh, really happy to learn that that

(42:51):
this podcast exists now. As of when we are recording
this episode, only two episodes are out UM, and I've
listened to both of those episodes. It's seven parts total,
so more of them, maybe all of them will be
out by the time this episode is out. A lot
of the episodes content was recorded in India with people
who survived or who lost family members, or who lived

(43:16):
in the area and weren't directly affected but have memories
of the after effects of it and all of that. Um,
it's a really good example of how folks who have
a different background and a different approach than Holly and
I have can really take a part of history that
would be uh a lot more difficult for us to
really do justice too. So again, um, this is called

(43:38):
They Knew Which Way to Run. I've been listening to
it on Apple Podcasts. I'm sure it's on lots of
other podcast platforms as well. So new episodes come out
every three weeks, so it may not all seven may
not be out yet by the time this episode comes out.
But I am looking forward to listening to them. Also,
thank you Apoorva for sending us this ail letting us

(44:01):
know about your show. If you would like to write
to us about this or any other podcasts where history
podcasts that I heart radio dot com and we're all
over social media. Ad Missed in History That's real, fund
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(44:25):
History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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