Vast Publicity Machine Blackens Labor, Credits 'Business' with War Effort Success
HOCHMAN, JULIUS
Vast Publicity Machine Blackens Labor, Credits 'Business' with War Effort Success By JULIUS HOCHMAN II THINK of the part which advertising plays in the anti* labor campaign. Advertising...
...Monopolists Play 'Eye Q' Game, As Millions Are Forced to Go Without Glassei By HARRY USS ?N the Church of Santa Maria there is an epitaph which * reads, "Here lies Salvino del Armati...
...In 1940, the National Youth Administration started a nation-wide program to discover and if possible correct physical handicaps of young people...
...The American Optical Company, largest manufacturer of glasses in the country controlling a nation-wide network of wholesalers, supplements "Vision for Victory" with a campaign of its own...
...Optician, optometrist and oculist are thus reassured that charges of "fleecing" ere groundless...
...According to a report on the project, "The NYA examined 900,000 young men and women, but the gap between examination and treatment was a wide one for many of these...
...Labor's role in all this is, of course, not mentioned...
...There are honest and1 competent oculists and optometrists — if the consumer-patient knows how to find them...
...There is for example in Washington a Group Health Association optometrist who examines and prescribes for glasses, and refers all cases requiring medical treatment to the staff oculist...
...As the by-laws read today, any applicant from a territory in which there is already a member or members can be elected . by the board of directors after certain financial payments...
...This new theme, said ? VI in trade announcements, will "banish many doubts and misconceptions in the public mind . . . correct false attitudes . . . remove prejudices which have grown as a result of crack-pot articles...
...All they produce is on order, and they cannot produce enough to satisfy the government's needs...
...One newspaper comments on it editorially, says in effect: "Well, it's bad, of course, but it's only an individual, exceptional case...
...What does the advertising consist of...
...The warming sun of lower prices is a more effective approach than the stormy methods of 'aggressive' and cost-increasing-salesmanship...
...that may come to it...
...Again and again I read of the Associated Press "franchises...
...We have a story to tell of organized labor's contribution to democracy, to universal suffrage, to free education...
...Samuel Bowles, of the Springfield Republican...
...Either properly trained oculists or optometrists serve the purpose, although some kind of organized cooperation and division of labor must be worked out, as tbe Committee on the Costs of Medical Care h'as suggested...
...The trials will not be resumed until the Secretaries of War and the Navy determine that further sessions will not impede the war effort...
...But organized labor * » movement and as an institution is held directly responsible for every misdeed or abuse to be discovered any-TF« »n its ranks...
...Yes, we have a story to tell—but it will not tell itself...
...or by a majority vote of the entire membership at a regular or special meeting sixty days after the filing of the - application...
...Wes have a story to tell of great institutions erected by unions for the sick, the aged and the needy, of widespread educational and cultural movements sponsored by American unions- We have a story to tell of organized labor's long fight through the past two decades , against dictatorship and totalitarianism...
...This was the Government's charge at Senate Patents Committee hearings early this year...
...Properly presented, the facts themselves can be made to tell an eloquent story, a story of courage and faith, of striving and achievement, that will appeal to the reason, the imagination of the public...
...4NE organization in the field, the Association of University Optometrists, has gone on record against these campaigns...
...There was still another reason for the protest rule, the justice of which is recognized by every experienced newspaper man—that frequently in the old days strike newspapers were started by people who were without the • capital or experience to conduct a newspaper in cities so provided with newspapers that there was no excuse whatever for a new one...
...The report's conclusion that the cost of refraction and glasses resulted in "leaving visual defects largely uncorrected" effectively explodes the Optical industry's contention that neglect hears the major responsibility...
...And anyway, labor is worse...
...It has the power to reach and sway the masses...
...But they are unfortunately handicapped by the lack of an adequate public relations policy and technique on our side...
...This is a big job, a vast job...
...We have a story to tell of the lifting of the submerged and' exploited wage earners to human dignity, to freedom...
...we produce the best guns, etc...
...it is a problem of "selling" trade unionism as a great American institution, as one of the great permanent pillars of the American way of life...
...I do not mean a campaign of high-pressure salesmanship in the usual sense of the word...
...THE No...
...In the October, 1942, Univie Bulletin a parable is told which insists that indifference and neglect not high prices are responsible...
...2...
...Our sympathies," the AO Company professed, "are with the layman who thinks that 'the price of glasses is too high' —not because he is right, but because he does not know any differently...
...He is the victim when oculists obtain kickbacks from opticians to whom they refer patients for filling prescriptions—a common practice...
...lar misunderstandings about the Associated , Press persist...
...1 organizational problem for labor today is the * problem of bringing a sound understanding of organized labor, its aims, aspirations and methods, to the public...
...The extent to which the presence of optical industry executives at trial sessions would impede the war effort is open to some question...
...the Secretary of labor, in a position to know, has praised labor's effort...
...Villard's opinions, of coarse, do not necessarily express the-view* of The New Leader...
...usually the trend is the other way...
...developing and synchronizing all the health services...
...It furnishes news to members who pay their share of the exact cost of gathering and transmitting the news—r nothing else...
...But it is a necessary job, a job that cannot be evaded without grave peril...
...in a world hungry for conveniences...
...is "net to engage in the business of selling intelligence, nor traffic in the same...
...Bead its ads, and what will you find ? In essence, one of these tilings is stressed: We produce the best ships...
...business as •institution is completely exonerated...
...It has established a fee schedule which introduces major and needed reform...
...Pick up a maga-dne...
...It has been a most useful and valuable competitor for the Associated Press...
...Now it must not be believed that the membership took that position in support of Colonel McCormick because it is fond of him personally...
...The parable concludes, "optical information programs have been driving at public information to overcome neglect...
...If in piping times of peace it is possible to reduce the assessments, they are reduced...
...About the beginning of this century it suddenly became necessary to form a new organization because the old one was in grave danger and the service, too, from control by William M. Laffan and the old United Press, which would have been a most unhappy development...
...That surely would be easier than forgiving the sins of the manufacturers of spectacles...
...The government, however, proceeded...
...116 to $20 a pair to the consumer-patient...
...This decj-^ sion which upheld anti-trust prosecution of price-fixing involved the Univis Lens Company...
...It advocates "Consumer-education programs which warn against shady practices . . . bring about reforms...
...Its by-laws specifically state that the A.P...
...National advertising," Bausch and Lomb announced to the trade this spring, "is the shining hope for public enlightenment...
...The Associated Press is organized under the laws of the State of New York according to which all social clubs and membership associations are incorporated...
...the president, could see the impropriety of this cowardly performance...
...The Justice Department's major anti-trust action against the American Optical Company, Bausch and Lomb, and others, for price-fixing through abuse of patent laws and ownership of wholesale outlets, stands adjourned for an indefinite period...
...The Associated Press brought suit against Hearst and its -case was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States, Hearst being found guilty of everything with which the Associated Press charged him...
...31) we dissented strongly frem the Associated Press's case against the Government...
...I deny that the Associated Press is a public service corporation, and I do so on the basis of my membership in the association for twenty-one years, and my service on the Board of Directors, where I was known as a faultfinder and a trouble-maker for a matter of two years...
...The jurisdictional dispute between oculists and optometrists which has raged for yeai's bears heavily on the cost of examinations and glasses...
...His father worked for press associations in the days of Lincoln and the War Years as a Washington correspondent...
...We have a story to tell that is not limited to improving living standards and opportunities for life for the masses of the people, important as thait is...
...This can be accomplished only by a well-organized promotional campaign carried on systematically over a period of time so as to reach the minds and hearts of the American people...
...Some years ago, however, altered conditions made desirable the abolition of the protest right, and I am glad, since I have advocated the change in the past, that it has now come to pass...
...we produce the best tanks...
...Villard's article will be published shortly...
...There are some newspapers, few in number, I admit, but important and influential, that would give labor an even break...
...He constantly risks, however, being victimized by dubious practices...
...It devised a new creed, The American Plan, which preaches the gospel that glasses are not mere merchandise but "fashioned materials'* into which go skilled services...
...of Florence, the inventor of spectacles...
...pROM all these examples we can gain a pretty clear idea ef how this kind of propaganda works...
...We must tell our story in the way demanded by the conditions of our complex industrial civilization, through the press, the radio, the movies, through every medium and channel through which the public can be reached...
...Statements and counter-statements on Mr...
...His comments now deserve to be widely read and discussed...
...we produce tne best planes...
...A recent Brookings Institution Study spotlights the Association's approach to the problem: "There is something between the ludicrous and the cynical in the attempt to justify today's heavy promotional expense...
...It launched a "consumer-education" campaign called "Vision for Victory...
...These advertisements seek to create the impression that ft* credit for the increased production and the development •f improved war equipment is the work of management •lone...
...The cumulative effect of it is that "we industrialists," "·* management" will win this war...
...The past several years witnessed Federal Grand Jury in-dichments of optical manufacturers, wholesalers, trade associations and individuals involved in price fixing and related practices...
...About "Vision for Victory" is says, "Elimination of one abuse means more to John Citizen than glib patriotic themes spread over the pages of national magazines...
...I had not pressed my motion to expel Hearst on the plea of the officers that it would not be right to do so until the Supreme Court had ruled...
...He himself, as a former editor and publisher of the New York Evening Pest, knows the AP from the inside...
...To buy...
...Apparently banking on public forgetfulness of its past record the Optical Industry opened some new fronts of its own...
...Incidents or developments unfavorable to business'are either suppressed outright jj> where that is impossible, are diluted beyond all recog...
...The problem is one of substituting planning for chaos in the eye field, and...
...So the Associated Press actually continued to serve the man whom it had convicted of one injury and one wrong after another"tevjt and of numerous violations of its rules...
...It is self-evident that the consumer-patient gains from this kind of cooperation...
...Its faults are their faults...
...Rates are substantially lower for corrected curve lenses than prevailing prices for inferior lenses (write to: 342 Madison Avenue, N. Y. C...
...It has no stock and declares no dividends...
...He is highly unpopular in the business, being overbearing, arrogant and generally a far from admirable character...
...Here is a good example of hbw it works: A scandal breaks out in which business executives are exposed paying themselves and their secretaries enormous salaries...
...The association is a non-profit organization that believes that existing needs for eye-care must be met by taking glasses out of the "luxury line" and abandoning restrictive practices which curtail consumption...
...Since these, things are not intended to be sold to the public, it is obvious that the purpose of these advertisements is not to sell but to buy...
...For what my opinion is worth, I do not hesitate to state my belief that if the Chicago Sun were in the other political camp and opposing the Administration in Washington, the Department of Justice would not have been induced to take up this case...
...It points out that "while the initial theme of the Better Vision Institute and American Optical Company programs are different, each will add to the strength of the other...
...It has grievous faults, as I have pointed out on many occasions, but it cannot be charged with being actuated in any way by the private profit motive, for no official and no member elf the Association can profit from any revenue...
...But in view of the complete breakdown of the Government's efforts to have the Chicago Tribune indicted for what was a legitimate news story, I can believe nothing else...
...Under its licensing system, Univis maintained prices of lenses at $3.25 a pair to the wholesaler...
...The long discourse on the personality of Marshall Field was an irrelevant smear...
...Unfortunately I, because of the...
...In 1940, attempting to ward off Government action, Bausch and Lomb protested that prosecution would impede deliveries of range-finders on which it was the sole bidder...
...Public opinion which penetrates the smokemcreen of "consumer-education'' and "public enlightenment" program* will indict the optical industry for perversion of the War Kffort to commercial ends...
...I should not hesitate if I wanted to embark on a newspaper enterprise today to start it with only the United Press service, and should not feel, especially if it were an evening venture, that I was handicapped by having only the United Press news...
...Yet if their sins are not being forgiven, they have "for the duration" been forgotten...
...a public service corporation—a public utility bound to give its service to anybody who comes along...
...America's "Eye Q" is not something that can be toyed with...
...It is a very strange thing how" certain popu...
...There is nothing occult about correcting defective vision...
...Neither Melville nor Adolph Ochs, nor Frank Noyes...
...At least it has never had officials who have ever made the attempt to raise its standards of their ewm accord...
...In short," it said, "the public mind will be set straight and at ease...
...Behind the Front Page /OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD was asked by The New Leader to comment ^ on the case of the Associated Press because as a serious and authoritative student of American journalism he knows newspapers and newspaper organisation...
...Its mistakes are their mistakes...
...This is the issue, and what the Government is seeking is a formal legal test of an important public issue...
...Every effort ¦ made to discredit labor, to picture the labor movement •¦narrow clique of self-seeking, corrupt job-holders with * concern at all for the welfare of the nation...
...good-will...
...Our durable industries have been converted for the sir effort...
...The mind of the American people is being poisoned against labor...
...It would be too strong to say that the members held their noses in coming to Colonel McCormick's side of the Chicago problem, but it is a fact that many voted with the reluctance and chagrin which they feel whenever Colonel McCormick takes the lead, as he has on several occasions, in generally defending the liberties of the press...
...Certainly Melville Stone would have been the last man to have countenanced and managed for so many years an organization intended to monopolize the news...
...It is a vast, far-flung, well-oiled machine operating through every channel known to modern propaganda technique, operating twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, in war as in peace, to destroy labor's standing in the community...
...TMOW let us have a look at the history of this *^ Associated Press, which is a totally different one from that served by my father in the winter of 1860-61 when he was stationed at Springfield to report the actions of the newly elected President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, up to the time for his departure for Washington...
...Traditional merchandise mark-ups of M0 to 600 par cent for "fashioned materials" are discarded...
...We must make up our minds to tell it, or it will remain untold: worse still, it will be suppressed, distorted and misrepresented by those short-sighted, reactionary forces in our country which see labor as their chief enemy...
...For today optical cartels and monopolies, through juggling of patent laws and price-fixing, have so effectively restricted mass production and distribution of glasses that some 34 million people who need them can't afford to buy them...
...Never-tieless, you find that these converted industries have not ibolished their advertising nor have they even diminished it...
...Today Univis doubts that high prices have material bearing on neglect of vision...
...Then the Associated Press never gets the credit it deserves for being a cooperative and not a money-making enterprise...
...The association translates its convictions into terms benefiting both the consumer-patient and the practitioner who believes in full utilization of his professional time...
...XTEXT it must be considered that what the * government is seeking to establish is two things: first, that the Associated Press is a monopoly, and, secondly, that it should be declared to be a public service corporation compelled to give its service to anybody asking for it, precisely as an electric lighting company must furnish current to any user who applies...
...But the membership felt that the Chicago Sun was established for political purposes and by a very rich man who is in nowise fitted to conduct a great newspaper, indeed had already shown his unfitness to do so by the record of PM in New York City...
...Its officials cannot rise above the moral and spiritual and professional level of the membership...
...He is the victim when physicians without special skill or training charge high specialists' fees...
...They could almost be called blackmailing sheets, established for the purpose of being bought...
...The general ¦cmod is to spread the legend that business is primarily or eelusively responsible for every great economic, industrial *»» social achievement of the nation...
...That's how they react when it's business that's involved...
...The AP's cries of "freedom of the press" seemed "patently disingenuous...
...Charles * R. Miller of the New .York Times (this was in the days before Adolph Ochs...
...The very life of labor, of all we have gained in the past decade and more, is in jeopardy...
...Financed by "visionary and enterprising manufacturers" "Vision for Victory" tells the consumer-patient, "Tun* up your eyes to play their part in the "Victory drive...
...You can't hold business and management -as a whole responsible...
...Villard Defends Associated Press Against Government Monopoly Charge Ey Oswald Garrison Villard TSE suit brought against the Associated Press by the Department of Justice under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law has already had the excellent result of inducing the Associated Press to alter its by-laws and to drop the right of protest which individual members .possess when in their own territory there are applications for new memberships...
...In some actions fines were paid, in others decrees against licensing agreements issued...
...these groups do is done with the purest of motives, •"bout regard to private profit—that these interests, in «re really identical with the interests of the nation...
...Price - Fixing Is Laid to Eyeless Trade," the New York Times headlined the case which now stands adjourned, "Fleecing of Public Seen — Evidence Said to Show $20 Spectacles Could Be Sold Profitably for $7.50...
...This was not m absolute right of protest since the protesting member or members could be overruled by the entire membership by a two-thirds vote...
...sale of my newspaper, was no longer a director of the Associated Press, and nobody else would press the motion...
...It is not a question of coneocting some slick sales talk, but rather of bringing the facts and the spirit before the public in an intelligent way...
...It is not an attempt to sell the public something it doesn't need and doesn't want...
...The simple truth is that United Press offers to anyone who wants it its present excellent service, for it is a mony-making capitalistic concern out to earn all that it can...
...God forgive his sins...
...Advertising usually is intended to sell foods...
...I have always been of-the opinion that the right of protest was established at that time for the very good reason that there was danger of the new organisation being raided by representatives of the then United Press (not to be confused with the present Scripps-Howard organization...
...I have been in the labor movement long enough to know that there are many in the field of labor reporting who know our movement well and who sympathize deeply with our aims and who would be only too glad to present our side to the public...
...The fact that it is a Hearst affair is sufficient to characterize it as to fairness and public spirit...
...A planned program of eye-care has been inaugurated in the metropolitan area, in which subscribers are offered a panel of pmfeaniiiel optometrists, with only graduates of approved universities, and standards of education, practice and examination are regulated...
...There are no franchises...
...On ft* contrary, through publicity, cleverly manipulated, the impression is sought that labor leaders are busy collecting •bee, calling strikes, and interfering with the war effort, •ai that the trade union membership is profiteering and baring one swell orgy interfering with production, Ine President "of the United States, after a personal Wpeetion tour, has praised labor's effort...
...When out-•pHjs or scandalous business practices are exposed, the ^blicity presents it as a matter of the individual respon-¦"flity of the particular businessmen involved...
...Is our major news-gathering organization "a combination and conspiracy in restraint of trade...
...The professions involved which serve as intermediaries between the manufacturers and the public share the guilt, unless they disavow these tactics...
...Far less valuable is the competition of the Hearst International News Service...
...to make 'Vision for Victory' a reality...
...But the aim of Government action—lowering prices to the public— has not been achieved...
...The case of the Chicago Sun was put before the meiriBership before this change, but the protest of Colonel McCormick of the Chicago Tribune was sustained, with the result that the government has acted...
...We have a story ' to tell of labor's proud record of hard work, loyal devotion and patriotic service in the great national effort to win the war...
...There are a number of newspapers today which have grown great and powerful without ever having printed ?? line of Associated Press news...
...But the general propaganda •$*tes all this and creates the opposite impression...
...We felt that the counter-argument to Thurman Arnold's charge of violation of the anti-trust laws was as a matter of fact "weak and warped...
...There is s difference between prosecution and persecution...
...The assessments paid by the members cover the cost of the service rendered...
...Long, indignant editorials appear denouncing, condemning, branding all labor because of some sin, real or imagined, of some individual labor leader or^other...
...That's how it goes...
...Indeed, I want to stress here the truth that the faults of the Associated Press are not due to the organization, but to the fact that it is controlled cooperatively by the members...
...OPEARHEAD in the campaign to manipulate public opinion was the "Better Vision Institute," public relatione mouthpiece of the optical industry...
...and later as the crusading editor of The Nation he has written sharply and critically of its practices...
...Two weeks ago (The New Leader, Oct...
...Confronted by charges and countercharges thrown at him by the competing practitioners, the consumer-patient can't apply familiar yardsticks when seeking eye-care...
...On the other hand, every possible incident or event I Played up—and often deliberately staged or manufac-j**H"~*Q promote the credit of management, employer and ¦Uiness groups and to create an impression that every...
...He had his weaknesses, but I always found him thoroughly loyal to American institutions...
...Today the AO Company bludgeons the consumer-patient with full page ads which couple the advance of optical science with justifications for prevailing high prices...
...When I was a director I moved to have William R. Hearst expelled from the Association because, although being a member on behalf of several of his chain of newspapers, he stole news from the service, garbled it, and was guilty of-, the usual unethical Hearst acts...
...Fundamentally, it is a problem of obtaining intellectual acceptance of our trade union movement on the part of the public, so that unionism as an institution becomes second nature in the public mind...
...There had to be very quick action and there was, and the lead was taken by some of the very finest men in American journalism, men who would never have dreamed of creating a monopoly or of taking any action antagonistic to the freedom of the press or the public welfare...
...Today through the propaganda of full-page ads, radio talks, sound films and literature, the monopolists cover themselves in a cloak of social and industrial righteousness...
...To me, therefore, the pretense of the Department of Justice that the Associated Press constitutes s violation of the Sherman anti-Trust Lew seems to be absolutely absurd, and I cannot imagine the Supreme Court so ruling unless it has lost its independence and become a mere tool of the government...
...Prodigal optical campaigns of "public enlightenment" Coincided with an adverse Supreme Court decision centering around the optical industry's abuse of patent laws...
...I wish to do no injustice to the Department, and if I am wrong in this opinion I am sorry...
...After almost two years of spreading the American Plan within the optical fold the AO Company announced, "Now that the Plan has received such wide acceptance within the profession, the time has come to carry the message to the public...
...labor the story is a very different one...
...Among these men were Edwin L. Godkin and Horace White of my old paper, The Evening Poet...
...John Holmes, of the Boston Herald, and many others of a type all too few today...
...The AO Company faced the need of soothing the disquiet of spectacle vendors—first to feel the repercussions of the hostility toward prevailing high prices...
...In a bombardment of high-pressure advertisements through every medium, the industry hammers home its answer to charges of restrictive practices and high prices...
...the Assistant Secretary of War, whose department carries the jeponsibility to a great extent for the conduct of the war, ¦H praised labor's effort...
...It is a job that we have to face and tackle without delay...
...It is an attempt to gain acceptance by the American people of the fundamental truth that trade unionism is an integral part of the American democratic way of life, that its aims, programs and achievements are something that we and the whole nation can be proud of...
...And Bausch and Lomb's cartel agreement with Zeiss of Germany, which restricted U. S. production of military optical equipment, was broken up...
...MOR can I see the necessity of declaring the * ' A.P...
Vol. 25 • November 1942 • No. 46
