Public Relations Review 36 (2010) 56–58

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Public Relations Review

Research in Brief

Government public relations during Herbert Hoover’s presidency

Mordecai Lee ∗

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WI, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 20 August 2009Received in revised form 10 October 2009Accepted 11 October 2009

Keywords:Herbert HooverGovernment public relationsPublic relations in public administrationUS Presidents

a b s t r a c t

While historians generally credit President Franklin Roosevelt with the establishment ofrobust public information activities in the federal government, this case study reviewsthose activities during the administration of Roosevelt’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover. Dur-ing Hoover’s term, agency PR was conducted extensively and openly enough to triggermedia and partisan attacks. This suggests that public relations emerged gradually in federaldepartments and agencies during the 20th century, well before FDR’s inauguration in 1933,and was already a natural element of the emerging profession of public administration.

© 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Government PR before FDR

The given narrative of the history of government public relations in the US has been that its practice in the federalgovernment in the first three decades of the 20th century was modest to minor, with the exception of the Committee on PublicInformation during World War I (Axelrod, 2009; Lee, 2008; Harding, 1947). Then, in spring 1933, at the beginning of FranklinRoosevelt’s presidency, it qualitatively and quantitatively took a giant leap forward during what have come to be known as theHundred Days and then continued developing and expanding during the New Deal and World War II (Herring, 1967:362–376;McCamy, 1939). If that is the case, then what was, if any, the practice of PR in the federal government avant le déluge?

Through the mists of history, the image of FDR’s immediate predecessor, Herbert Hoover, is that of passivity and dogma-tism, of a person overwhelmed by the seismic shocks of the Great Depression. That image is partly an outgrowth of Hoover’spoor presidential public relations, even though his earlier public relations practices as Secretary of Commerce had beenextensive and successful (Barry, 1997). Therefore, it is something of a surprise to learn that – in contradistinction to WhiteHouse PR – one of the contemporary criticisms of the Hoover administration had been that the federal government engagedin too much public relations during his term. This is a brief historical overview of departmental PR during Hoover’s presi-dency and the criticisms it engendered from legislators, Democratic partisans and reporters. It contends that the acceptednarrative of public relations in the federal government overstates the qualitative differences between the Hoover and FDRyears and that it understates the scope of the practice when Hoover headed the executive branch.

2. The view of the capital press corps: Herbert Hoover, the PR president

In a 1931 article in the magazine American Mercury, veteran Washington reporter J. Frederick Essary wrote that “In orderto strengthen the White House publicity machine, Mr. Hoover has outdone all his predecessors” (Essary, 1931, 427). His

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M. Lee / Public Relations Review 36 (2010) 56–58 57

denunciation of Hoover’s presidential PR was something of a throwaway line coming at the end of a long piece describingand criticizing the growth of public relations by executive branch agencies during Hoover’s presidency. He criticized at lengthand in great detail “the great battery of government press agents” that had become “the greatest propaganda establishmentin the world” (419).

That same year, Henry Suydam, another veteran Washington reporter, addressed a Conference on the Press sponsored byPrinceton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His topic was reporters’ relations with the federal executive depart-ments (Conference, 1931: xi), which he knew from working on both sides of that relationship. (He had briefly been a pressofficer in the State Department in the early 1920s before returning to journalism).1 Suydam noted that since the beginning ofWorld War I and through to the time of the conference (the second half of Hoover’s term) there had been a significant expan-sion in the number of federal agencies with “official press agents” and their tendency to centralize agency news activities,issue frequent minor press releases and control access to agency newsmakers (Conference, 1931: 68–71).

A decade later, influential New York Times reporter and columnist Arthur Krock pegged the emergence of agency publicrelations to the Hoover administration, not FDR. He said, “In the time of President Hoover government propaganda, throughthe gradual and growing employment of press agents for the departments, began to attain the status of a major officialindustry” (Krock, 1940). This was a significant admission, given Krock’s consistently frosty view of FDR’s presidency and theopportunity to blame the growth of government PR on Roosevelt, rather than Hoover.

3. Government PR for bullfrogs

In early 1932, Senator Pat Harrison (D-MS) criticized the large flow of information materials from the US Department ofAgriculture. During a debate on a deficiency spending bill (necessary due to the Great Depression) he read on the floor ofthe Senate some of the titles of publications issued by the department as proof of unnecessary spending. One was “The LoveAdventures of the American Bullfrog” (Duffus, 1932). With great mirth, he described it: “Why, they even have one that tells ofthe love adventures of the American bullfrog. . . .It tells you that when this bullfrog is in love and mating, he croaks or makesa noise – wonderful piece of literature” (House reduces, 1932). Harrison’s mocking of USDA publications got widespreadcoverage and added to the general legislative, media and public derision towards federal agency publicity (Flowers, 1932).Five years later, USDA was still defensively trying to live that one down (Harding, 1937: 89–90). The Senator’s attack impliedthat this was symptomatic of excessive PR by the Hoover administration and was an effective partisan shot. Later, it turnedout that the publication had been issued in 1921 (Helm, 1932: 9).

4. Farm policy, 1932

Other Democratic legislators also attacked PR in Hoover administration agencies in 1932. Early that year, the House cutthe budget of the information office of the Department of Agriculture as a way of showing its stronger commitment tocutting spending than Hoover (Farm Bill, 1932). A few months later, Senate Majority Leader Joe Robinson (D-AR)2 attackedHoover’s Secretary of Agriculture, claiming the department’s publicity office had printed and distributed what Robinsoncharacterized as a political statement intended to help Hoover’s re-election. Robinson piously bemoaned using money thathad been “appropriated for wholesome publicity purposes” and instead spent on distributing statements of the Secretary’spolicy positions on pending legislation (Folliard, 1932: 1). The charge was a front page story in the New York Times, agrand slam home run for a politician. Implicitly, Robinson was stating that he supported some forms of agency publicityas unobjectionable, unlike the one he was criticizing. Yet, like so many others before (and after) him, he did not define theboundary line between the two.

5. Conclusions

This historical review suggests that the flowering of government public relations at the beginning of Franklin Roosevelt’sadministration was not ex nihilo. Rather, it was a relatively common activity in federal departments and agencies bothduring and before Hoover presidency. This suggests that the maturation of government PR beginning in 1933 was more inthe nature of a quickening and expansion of a trend that was already well underway previously, rather than a major breakwith the previous pattern. This revisionist perspective credits Hoover and some of his 20th century predecessors with theinstitutionalization and normalization of public relations as a normal component of public administration, then an emergingprofession.

The attacks on external communications activities of executive branch departments and agencies during Hoover’s pres-idency were from journalists who reflexively criticized government press agents and from opposition legislators seeking toscore rhetorical and political points. Looking back, it now appears that these attacks were but a minor prelude to the fero-cious assault on agency public relations by Congress’s conservative coalition when these PR activities significantly increasedduring FDR’s and Truman’s presidencies.

1 In 1934, the year after FDR’s inauguration, Suydam became the chief public relations officer of the Department of Justice.2 As a Congressman in 1910, Robinson had strenuously objected to the Census Bureau even having a press agent.

58 M. Lee / Public Relations Review 36 (2010) 56–58

References

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