The Dilemma of Mr. Jones (1928)
An excerpt from Mr. Lee's Publicity Book, by Ivy Lee
Foreword
Ivy Ledbetter Lee is known today as one of the most significant figures in the formation of modern propaganda. Lee was born the son of a Methodist minister, in Cedartown, Georgia, 1877, but these humble roots did nothing to hinder his climb to the top. A graduate of Emory and Princeton, he went on to become a journalist for New York-based newspapers including the New York Times.
Following his time as a journalist, Lee moved into the management of publicity for major corporations, known today as public relations or simply “PR”. His client list was not insignificant. As an early success in his career, he was behind the quelling of concerns created by the 1906 Atlantic City train wreck. The public’s concern was remediated by Lee consulting the Pennsylvania Railroad Company to address the travesty in what has become known as the first press release, published in the New York Times.
More egregiously, he assisted the Rockefellers in cleaning their sullied name after the brutal Ludlow Massacre that resulted in the deaths of twenty men, women, and children. The violence was in response to striking miners calling for improved work conditions from the Colorado Fuel & Iron company, who turned towards the Colorado National Guard for a forceful solution. The respondent conflict, known as the Colorado Coalfield War, led to many more deaths, with the exact number unknown.
After the bloody 10-day skirmish, the reputation of the Rockefellers was greatly damaged, as John D. Rockefeller Jr. was a significant stakeholder in the CF&I. With Ivy Lee’s counsel, Rockefeller Jr. set out to repair his besmirched name. It’s hard to say if Rockefeller Jr. was guilty of anymore than being ignorant of how a company he inherited from his father was being run, as unforgivable as the consequences of his ignorance may be. It’s equally hard to paint with broad strokes the nature of Ivy Lee’s character. While he was helping to stifle the outbreak of striking workers across the country, his approaches were decidedly less nefarious than that of his highly-manipulative contemporary Edward Bernays. In most cases, his pursuant strategy for helping to mend a company’s reputation was to encourage honesty, transparency, and compromise towards the requests of strikers.
Lee’s penchant for straightforwardness in his work may have been born of his roots in journalism, where the integrity of the work calls for deadpan impartiality. In contrast, Bernays’ claims are often taken with a grain of salt, even in his writings. In his two most famous works, Crystallizing Public Opinion and Propaganda, it's hard to tell when Bernays was communicating earnestly or trying to manipulate readers into seeking his services. Ivy Lee’s works veer differently, resulting in highly interesting reads that allow one to peer into the minds of persons in PR and advertising, the most prominent propagandists of our time.
One such work is Ivy Lee’s Publicity Book: A Citizen’s Guide to Public Relations; Unpublished Writings of Ivy Lee, 1928. This book originated as an internal manual compiled within Lee’s own PR firm Smith & Lee. The first chapter of this guide, titled “The Dilemma of Mr. Jones” paints an uncanny picture of the mind of the average person under the influence of numerous forces that unconsciously drive their actions every day. Almost a hundred years later, this yarn bears a striking relevance to our lives today. For this, I have chosen to transcribe it for easy reading online. The footnotes of this post are footnotes lifted directly from the text, which help clarify some of the dated jargon and events.
Anyhow, without any further ado…
The Dilemma of Mr. Jones
Although his father and grandfather were Republicans and he himself had always been loyal to the party, Mr. Jones once felt compelled to vote the Democratic ticket. At first he was frightened at the audacity, but looking back on it, he felt that vote was his declaration of independence. Thereafter he voted the Republican ticket faithfully, but he no longer considered himself a slave to any party, or to influence of any kind.
To himself, Jones appeared the perfect embodiment of Robert Burns’ ideal — “the man of independent mind.”1 He rather looked down on people whose minds were continually being made up for them.
Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that: For a' that, an' a' that, His riband, star, an' a' that, The man o' independent mind, He looks and laughs at a' that. Excerpt from Robert Burns' "A Man’s a Man for A’ That"
In order to get to his office on time, Jones had to get up at 7:45 a.m., but he rose regularly at 7:30 a.m. and spent a quarter of an hour doing deep breathing and calisthenics by an open window. As part of his breakfast he insisted upon an orange from a certain state, although he never examined the comparative food values of oranges from other states and could not tell the difference in taste between them.
Every day as he went downtown, Jones complained about the transit system of his city. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays his complaint was directed against the transit company. Jones had not examined the company’s books, but he was convinced that the stockholders were getting enormous returns, that the stock was watered, the financial reports fraudulent, and the company generally a menace to the city. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, Jones still complained, but the object of his attack was the public service commission which was hamstringing the transit company, refusing it permission to charge an adequate fare, and standing in the way of the creation of new subway lines. Jones was far too busy to attend the public hearings of the commission, but he was pretty sure that all its members were political appointees without any adequate knowledge of the city’s needs and no public spirit.
Swaying from a strap, Jones read his newspaper and when he got to his office he frequently remarked to his partner, Mr. Smith, that “that was a great speech the governor (or the president) made last night.” Sometimes, if his mail was light, he took time to tell Smith what was on his mind in regard to farm relief and the situation in China. Jones had never been on a farm, and his acquaintance with Chinese matters was limited to a pronounced distaste for chop suey (which he believed to be a native Chinese dish); but he had pretty definite opinions on these subjects whenever Smith ventured to hold a hostile view. Jones remarked that Smith was getting all his ideas out of the peculiarly untrustworthy newspaper he read, and wasn’t thinking for himself at all.
Note from Seth: It’s likely that Smith and Jones are a reference to the essay by Mark Twain titled “Corn-Pone Opinions” (written in 1901, but published in 1923). However, it could have been further influenced by the famous comic strip “Keeping up with the Joneses” by Pop Momand in 1913.
Jones’s office was up to date. It was furnished with the proper number of push-buttons, filing cabinets, trays, and under the glass tops of his desk there lay two cards: a list of his insurance policies with the dates premiums were due, and the motto “Do It Now.” Jones had once been in the office of a great American executive and saw his insurance list under a desk top, and, although Jones’ own insurance was all in one company, which always sent him notices of premiums due a month in advance, he thought the executive’s idea a good one. As for “Do It Now,” everyone had that card.
It had been Jones’ habit to eat some meat for lunch, but one day a friend had argued the immeasurable benefits of crackers and milk and, from that time, Jones, although he occasionally felt a bit faint at four o’clock, ate lightly at mid-day. At 4 p.m., he fell into the habit of chewing a chocolate bar. It was his own idea and he wondered why more people didn’t do the same; one day he saw chocolate advertised for this very purpose and pointed out the ad to a friend. He was rather annoyed to later discover that the advertisement had been displayed in the same place (which Jones passed every day on his way to work) for several years.
Jones had grown a beard when he started in business for himself, because he thought it made him look older and more dependable, but as he grew older and business prospered, he decided that he could afford to be clean-shaven. It was entirely his own idea and he was pleased to see that other people followed his lead. His wife, who kept up with Charles Dana Gibson’s2 heroes seemed particularly pleased, and Jones was convinced that a man of initiative need never fear the consequences if he acts boldly. Many years later, when his wife bobbed her hair, he discovered to his amazement that he did not dislike the effect (although he had originally protested loudly against the change). He was glad to find that he was liberal-minded, and the fact that millions of imitators of Irene Castle3 had made bobbed hair as familiar to him as bread and butter never occurred to him.
In dress, Jones was never swayed by fashion. Advertisements of sport shirts and baggy trousers, pronouncements from English tailors, the snappy appearance of young men home from college, did not affect him. Jones chose his own clothes, to suit his own personality. The result was that Jones was dressed as a good conservative business man should be dressed, his clothes rich not gaudy, and not expressed in fancy. He never wore a soft collar or a bow tie to the office; his suits were dark and woolen; his handkerchief was never in his sleeve. Jones did not know it, but he dressed exactly as he had been told to dress — told by his observation of other conservative business men, by his friends, by his reading of advertisements, by listening to sarcastic remarks about novelties, by an ingrown fear of being eccentric. This complication of forces Jones was not aware of, and he called his taste in clothes an expression of his own personality.
Although he disliked walking, Jones walked halfway home from his office and kissed his wife whenever she happened to meet him in the hallway of their home. There was nothing freakish about the furnishings of the house, but each room was just what Mr. and Mrs. Jones wanted it to be. The twin beds which had replaced their original four-poster were of the same kind as those used by a duchess and a New York society leader. Jones had a reclining chair that had a trick button that pushed out a foot-rest. Every month the Joneses received and read a book which was the best book of the month. They had recently switched from auction to contract bridge4 and their Mahjongg tiles had all disappeared into odd corners of the children’s playroom. They never slapped their children.
Jones’ beliefs were almost all of the result of his own thinking. He went to the church into which his father and mother had brought him, but he was not bigoted. In politics, he once voted against his party, and in local elections he put character above party, voting always for the best man and being gratified to discover how often his party managed to select a more competent and more honest man than their opponents. He was a liberal in international affairs, believing that the European nations ought to pay their debts, but that they ought not to spend money on armaments and that the United States ought not to be too harsh in its terms. He disapproved of Soviet Russia and thought that nationalization of women5 was a crime against human decency. He never got over the fact that during the war the Germans were disrespectful to their own dead, and when he heard that the cadaver-melting factory6 was a fake, he was much relieved, but he maintained that Germany, under the Kaiser, had nevertheless set itself outside the bounds of international honor. He thought Mussolini a great man, but wished that Italy had freedom of the press.
Jones had been in the habit of going to his Rotary Club luncheon, because he considered the fellow members the salt of the earth, but one day he discovered he did not care for them so much. It was an entirely independent decision and it was out of his own personal experience that he decided the Rotarians were “a bunch of Babbitts.”7 Instead he went to lunch at a restaurant picked out at random as he walked down the street and was surprised to find half a dozen of his friends there.
“Joining the crowd, eh?” one of them called to him. “Everybody’s lunching here nowadays.”
Jones took a vacant seat and presently was discussing prohibition. He said it had reduced crime. Pressed for proof, he confessed that the figures escaped him, but he was sure he was right. While his neighbor was talking to him, Jones overheard another man say that Mammoth Motors was about to go into the airplane business.
“I’m in a position to deny that,” he cut in.
“Oh, really? I didn’t know you were on the inside.”
“I’m not,” replied Jones, “But they issued a statement to their stockholders today and specifically denied it.”
There was some discussion, but in the end, Jones felt he had carried his point. Cheered by the impression he had made on his friends, he decided that he would take his wife to the theater that night. “What’s a good show?” he inquired.
“They say The Black Hat is selling out weeks in advance,” someone told him.
His wife, over the phone, was delighted at the thought of going to The Black Hat. “Everybody’s seen it,” she said.
Jones, having selected the play by use of his independent judgement, was well-pleased.
One day, Jones was staring at a “Safety First” sign and smiling at the thought of people who needed to be warned to take care of themselves. In his amusement he stepped off the curb and was promptly run down by a motor car.
In the delirium which followed, a terrible thing happened to Jones. He saw himself as he really was.
He discovered that his clothes, his habits of living, his thoughts, everything he considered part of his individual personality, were all the results of outside influence and decided that the best one was “propaganda” because it had a suggestion of impropriety. He realized that even when he went against the current, he only did so because some outside force had suggested that idea to him. He became sadly aware of his ignorance about Congress and China and of the street car situation. He had a flash of insight during which he decided that he loved his wife, but that perfunctory kiss he gave her when he came home was not due to his affection but to reading little sermons on happy marriage in his evening paper. He knew that he did not slap his children because a great fuss had been made in public about new ideals for child education. He discovered a suppressed desire for loud socks.
During his convalescence, Jones determined that when he got out of the hospital he would really live independently. He would armor himself against propaganda of every sort. He would read only the facts in the newspapers and would reject all propaganda whether it was in the form of editorials, electric signs, or word-of-mouth.
On his first day after he was released from the hospital, Jones waited for the streetcar at his usual place, but the car whizzed by him and he noticed the laughter of a few people in the car. After two more cars had refused to stop, Jones noticed that the motorman was waving him toward the next corner. He went there and got on the next car, learning from the conductor that a skip-stop8 plan had been instituted.
“You might let people know,” Jones said angrily.
The conductor, making change for someone else, muttered something about Jones needing to read the newspaper.
At his office, Jones had nothing to say to his partner after his accident had been exhausted as a topic, and when his partner asked him what he thought of the situation in Nicaragua,9 Jones had to confess that hadn’t had time to study the subject. Nor was Jones able to understand Smith’s reference to a new coastwise shipping line to which he wanted to throw some business, and when a client came in and began to discuss the presidential campaign, all Jones could say was that, until a man studied the whole situation, he ought not to make up his mind.
That evening he started to study the whole situation. A methodical man, he summarized his investigation under headings: domestic affairs, farm relief, corporations, tariffs, financial policies, electric power and the Boulder Dam, foreign affairs, European debts, The League of Nations, treaties for outlawing war, Latin America, and so on. What he wanted was impartial statements of the facts — no propaganda. On the third night of his studies, he began to be aware of difficulty. He discovered that each of his subjects was a special field of study on which experts had worked for years, and that the experts often did not agree.
He found that facts were pretty slippery things unless you knew exactly how to handle them.
Gradually, he was snowed under. He could not understand the statistics on which he had pinned his hopes. Reparations and payments of war debts began to create a chaos of meaningless figures in his brain. In connection with the League of Nations he discovered that there were no facts, only arguments, and rejected all argument because it was propaganda. He kept his mind clean of prejudice — but his mind refused to make any decisions of any kind.
He dined at a neighbor’s house and was called on to admire the new refrigerator. Instantly he was aflame with envy because he wanted to be the first in his gang to introduce the new system. “How did you get onto this?” he asked, and was told that there were ads in all the papers about it.
On the streetcar that night, Jones had stopped reading the paper after he had got “the facts alone” and had plenty of time to listen to his neighbors.
“Johnson’s breaking up,” said one, mentioning the name of a prominent city official.
“So I hear,” said the other. “Wife’s divorcing him, hey?”
“Not only that. They’ve got him for using municipal bonds for security — he speculated in the market and lost.”
“Too bad.”
Jones was shocked. After dinner he was talking to his host, while their wives chatted about schools for the children, and he said, “Too bad about Johnson.”
“It sure was,” said his host. “A coincidence like that—.”
“I mean about speculating and getting divorced,” Jones said, not quite understanding what his friend meant.
“Yes. Of course it’s all straightened out.”
“I get the idea he’d resign rather than be brought into court.”
“What the dickens would he resign for?”
“Well, they say—.”
“Good Lord man, don’t you read the papers?”
Jones muttered something about propaganda and his host went on.
“You don’t mean to tell me you’re still under the impression that was really Johnson? Why everybody knows it was a distant cousin with the same name. Of course a rumor like that hurts a man — but thank God the facts came out promptly.”
Jones said he was glad to hear it.
A few days later he heard that Complicated Petroleum was due for a slump and sold all his shares. It went up eight points, and Jones belatedly looked up the financial report of the company to learn why.
Another matter that annoyed Jones was connected with electricity. He had been receiving letters from the utility company, but, with his new resolve not to pay attention to publicity, he had thrown them [sic] into the waste basket unread. When Wilkins, who occupied the adjoining apartment, spoke of taking advantage of the contract offered by the utility company, Jones laughed vaguely, until Wilkins explained that the new contract saved him $40 a year.10
When Jones had to invite some friends to the theater, he found himself unable to choose a play. Since he would not be influenced by publicity nor by the propagandized minds of his friends, the only way he could evaluate them was to go to all the plays himself and to judge their merits unaided. He could not afford this and the situation baffled him.
He was being baffled, in fact, by a great many things. He seemed to be living in a void. He read the news items in the papers, but he could not quite understand what the significance of the items were, hardly knowing whether the election in France meant a victory for sound finance or for socialism, and remaining utterly at a loss about the qualifications of the several candidates for alderman in his own ward. From the conversation of his friends he realized that new things were going on in the world — new inventions, new ideas, new motor cars — but Jones had no opinions on them whatever. Somehow the materials for making up his own mind were lacking.
In his discomfort, Jones became fanatical. He decided that he was against everything advertised, everything publicized. He began to dream of a society in which these things did not exist, and gradually he eliminated everything he hated, not from his daily life, because his wife saw to that, but from his imagined ideal city. There were no streetcars and no motors, no telephones and no newspapers, no electric light, no running water, no elections.
Jones came to with a start. In his mind he was becoming a savage. The things that made life desirable were all products of advertising, publicity, and information. So long as he lived as a respectable father, husband, and citizen, he was part of a group created by the forces of public opinion. And he wanted to be in the group. He wanted to be among those who went to the movies, and among those who use the best razor, and among those who voted for the best man.
So long as he rejected all publicity, he isolated himself. He took on the impossible burden of solving all problems of the universe unaided and alone. He had to do the work of a 100,000 experts before he could make the simplest decision. On the other hand was the plight of Jones before his accident — when everything was decided for him by outside forces. It was a dilemma.
In Conclusion
If it isn’t clear in the conclusion of this yarn, Lee held a favorable view of publicity. Undoubtedly, he was biased — it was in his interest for people to seek out help in navigating the confusing web of information being woven in the early 20th century. Furthermore, Lee’s ability to paint a story that feels so applicable to so many really illustrates his preacher-boy roots. We all know a Mr. Jones, and we all are Mr. Jones. Some of us differ in which side of the dilemma we stand, but that’s the only real difference.
My real reason for bringing the plight of Jones to light today is two-fold.
I wanted to demonstrate that people have not changed much in the past century (or ever) and likely won’t be anytime soon. If you’ve ever fully exited social media platforms, you know the isolation and disconnectedness it brings about. Social media platforms are soul-sucking advertisement platforms taking advantage of a very real human need: to connect with others towards understanding the world around us.
I am seeking to highlight that there’s no right way to be. Nobody should buy fully into the information being placed in front of them, as it takes money and power to move information, not unlike merchandise. If you’re hearing about any given event, product, or person — unless you are an insider or viewing the phenomenon with your own eyes — there was a vested interest by somebody much more rich and powerful than you to make sure that you did. However, to shut out the outside world entirely is a folly. That doesn’t mean to buy into the idea that you must know (or even care) about what’s happening everywhere in the world. It means to turn your attention towards the community, your friends, and your family.
The world of black metal is full of iconoclasts and know-it-alls, hermits and sycophants. They all suck. We all suck. Those in power who keep us in this confusing web suck the most. Nobody is special, and nobody knows anything that wasn’t presented to them without somebody more powerful hoping to influence them. Participate in the world and your community, but be your own person and don’t buy into every cause beamed into your eyes. As I said, information doesn’t move for free. Maybe one day, it will. Until then, keep your focus on what’s in front of you — and that doesn’t mean your screen.
That’s all. Happy 420. Have some Terror Propaganda.
Robert Burns (1759—796) was a Scottish Poet. “The man of an independent mind” comes from his poem “A Man’s a Man for A’ That.”
Charles Dana Gibson (1867—1944) was a popular magazine illustrator, especially prior to WWI.
Irene Castle (1893—1969) was a ballroom dancer, famous both on Broadway and in silent films.
Auction bridge had evolved from straight bridge in 1904. Subsequent changes to auction bridge were called “contract bridge.”
After WWI, several critics pointed to Russian decrees that allegedly claimed that women were the property of the state. Other observers pointed out that such decrees were facetious, indicative of political infighting within Russia.
During WWI, unproven claims circulated widely about the Germans having a cadaver-melting factory for the purposes of making soap from human corpses.
This term comes from the 1922 novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. It refers to a businessperson who adheres to prevailing middle-class norms.
A “skip-stop” plan is an approach used by streetcar operators to save power consumption. It centers on reducing the number of streetcar stops along a route
In 1926 and 1927, Nicaragua was engaged in a civil war.
Forty dollars in 1928 is the equivalent of $558.00 in 2017.
Note from Seth: That’s $722.15 in March 2024, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.