Public opinion; Public relations; Publicity; Social psychology
In a long article about the attitude of the public towards the
railroads, the _Railway Age_ reaches the conclusion that the most
important problem which American railroads must solve is “the problem
of selling themselves to the public.” Some public utilities maintain
public relations departments, whose function it is to interpret the
organizations to the public, as much as to interpret the public to
them. The significant thing, however, is not the accepted importance of
public opinion in this or the other individual industry, but the fact
that public opinion is becoming cumulatively more and more articulate
and therefore more important to industrial life as a whole.
The New York Central Railroad, for example, maintains a Public
Relations Department under Pitt Hand, whose function it is to make it
clear to the public that the railroad is functioning efficiently to
serve the public in every possible way. This department studies the
public and tries to discover where the railroad’s service can be mended
or improved, or when wrong or harmful impressions upon the public mind
may be corrected.
This Public Relations Department finds it profitable not only to bring
to the attention of the public the salient facts about its trains, its
time tables, and its actual traveling facilities, but also to build
up a broadly coöperative spirit that is indirectly of great value to
itself and benefit to the public. It coöperates, for example, with
such movements as the Welcome Stranger Committee of New York City in
distributing literature to travelers to assist them when they reach
the city. It coöperates with conventions, to the extent of arranging
special travel facilities. Such aids as it affords to the directors
of children’s camps at the Grand Central Station are especially
conspicuous for their dramatic effect on the general public.
Even a service which is in a large measure non-competitive must
continually “sell” itself to the public, as evidenced by the strenuous
efforts of the New York subways and elevated lines to keep themselves
constantly before the people in the most favorable possible aspect. The
subways strive in this regard to create a feeling of submissiveness
toward inconveniences which are more or less unavoidable, and they
strive likewise to fulfill such constructive programs as that of
extending traffic on less frequented lines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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