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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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? 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, in Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio app and wherever else you get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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? 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, in Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio app and wherever else you get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.