THE NAM IN THE SCHOOLS
Geis, Gilbert
The NAM in the Schools By Gilbert Geis IT IS more than 20 years now since the Federal Trade Commission first focused an embarrassingly-bright spotlight on the "educational" activities of the...
...883,852 publications went to "community leaders...
...Thirty-nine recordings were distributed to almost 8,000 independent stations...
...It warns that government legislation aimed at improving industrial conditions for the workers will lead only to the eventual destruction of the American nation...
...public ownership of power resources...
...3. Employment in industry does not cause either moral delinquency or physical degeneration...
...There is a well-known academic saying that "statistics don't lie, but statisticians may...
...With typical forthrightness, it boasts that: "No one has realized more than the employed members of the NAM that men aren't machines...
...This bill, the NAM warned, would destroy the American shipbuilding industry...
...The LaFollette Civil Liberties Committee, investigating the activities of the NAM between 1933 and 1938, found that it "had blanketed the country with a propaganda which in technique has relied upon indirection of meaning, and in presentation, upon secrecy and deception...
...members...
...It will illustrate a characteristic often associated with long-term manipulation of public opinion —the operation of a short memory...
...In 1919 he directed the organization of the Illinois Committee on Public Utility Information...
...of other industries, today determine...
...The booklet is titled "The Public Be Served" and it discusses the NAM's pioneering traditions through the years...
...January marked the 55th year of the NAM's existence...
...I find your material useful in my contemporary society class and very timely in my economics class," the teacher wrote...
...It was in 1928, despite its boast that it had realized that "men aren't machines," that the NAM employed a staff of statisticians to make and chart researches designed to illustrate the advantages of factory work—especially for children...
...Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, the Commission conducted a painstaking, three-year, 26-volume investigation of propaganda activities by the power industry...
...powerful National Association of Manufacturers...
...This was justified on the ground that children tend to get into trouble if allowed too much leisure time beyond the bounds of factory supervision...
...People in a mass . . . tend to think in blurs," he said...
...We hear overtones of another warning which foretold the dire consequences of passage of an eight-hour day law affecting companies handling government contracts...
...To move people in a mass by "simple, emotional ideas," the NAM, during the first nine months of 1949 issued a total of 1,927,907 booklets, sponsored 46 network and 47 local radio programs, and conducted 98 workshops...
...42 articles were prepared...
...The amazing results which have been obtained by companies that have used films . . . indicate that industrial films, well-conceived and well-produced, can accomplish almost any communications task which industry is faced...
...the propaganda activities of the...
...These are the three rather startling conclusions that were reached by the Association's committee: 1. Industrial employment does not cause physical or mental slowing up...
...They are moved primarily by simple, emotional ideas...
...Within two years, the Committee distributed more than five million pieces of literature...
...Holcombe Parke summarized the Association's movie campaign when he resigned as the NAM vice president in charge of public relations Feb...
...By mid-January of this year, this mailing had brought requests for more than 3,000,000) pieces of free NAM literature...
...Their goals, like those GILBERT GEIS, a graduate fellow in sociology, has studied at Colgate, Brigham Young, the University of Stockholm, and now the University of Wisconsin where he is completing work for his doctorate...
...it asked...
...In 1932 the NAM had its say on this subject: "It has been claimed that in addition to providing for a 48-hour weekly limitation, we should further provide for an 8-hour day limitation...
...The report sharply criticized the educational system: "Why can't you come into the factories, work with us in the construction of curricula and define the conditions of a progressive training which entitles employers to use the labor of children and carry forward with a creative ideal of accomplishment in place of the ideals of idleness which you are instilling today...
...Samuel Insull was the originator of the utility propaganda machinery...
...It would drive out of business every manufacturer doing both government work and commercial work, and no manufacturer would risk disaster to his entire establishment by undertaking a government contract...
...The public pays the expense...
...NAM officials have claimed that their booklets are read by two out of every three American high school students...
...We are not prepared to do so...
...It was during the late '20s that the NAM did battle with the child labor measure which was up for consideration as the 20th Amendment to the Constitution...
...The hearings exposed, in the judgment of one scholar, "a record of misleading, biased, pseudo-factual private utility information disguised as impartial facts...
...Today, it has a complete industrial relations program, but_ even in the early days "it put its full weight behind state legislation to wipe out the blight of child labor in the factories...
...Don't be afraid of expense," M. H. Ayleworth, managing director of the National Electric Light Association, told the public relations section...
...The Association estimates that some 30,000 college and university students and 1,500 faculty members "have been impressed with the bene?-fits of the individual enterprise system" during the College Speaking Program's first five months in operation...
...2. Increased schooling does not increase earning capacity for the large majority...
...The NAM asked that "physically able children over 14 who are unable or unwilling to go further than the sixth grade and who in thf judgment of their parents would ht littler employed at work should not be, prevented by any state law...
...Today, it is estimated that a million dollars are spent daily by the Association to make the American people believe that what is good for business is good for them...
...A Catalogue of Teach...
...By 1924, Matthew S. Sloan, president of the Brooklyn Edison Company, decided that the work of the expanding public information committees was "the most important in the whole broad scope of the activities of the electric utilities...
...except in its own special field of private vs...
...On the initiative of the late Sen...
...An impartial survey, the NAM reported, had shown that schools were wasting the money of business enterprises and other loyal taxpayers by requiring children to at-tend school when the factories could provide a much more practical education than that offered by the school system...
...The reason was altruistic: We feel that such a suggestion for a legal limitation would be opposed by a majority of our directors and members, not because of any desire to work children long hours, but because of a belief that the recognition of a uniform 8-hour basis for a group of workers will be used as a 'peg' with which to pry free enactment of legislation stipulating a legal 8-hour day for all workers...
...The original utility propaganda machine—emasculated by the FTC investigation, the spread of publicly-owned power systems, and the revelations of Insull's financial manipulations—has long since become comparatively mute...
...When social security legislation was introduced, the NAM offered a substitute proposal: No government plan would work, it insisted, but "it is the moral responsibility of the private employer to encourage, assist, and inspire his employees with the importance and necessity of ways and means for making provisions for the contingencies of life...
...Leonard Doob of Cornell University as "the attempt to affect the personalities and to control the behavior of individuals toward ends considered unscientific or of doubtful value in a society at a particular time...
...In addition, NAM movies were shown 15,939 times from January through September to an audience estimated at some two million persons...
...The italics in the preceding NAM statement are mine—because the statement contrasts so sharply with another which appears in a booklet recently distributed by the Association...
...In 1904, the NAM predicted: "The movement is unreasonable and most ill-timed, and no greater calamity could befall the industrial interests of the country than its success...
...151,133 industrial press service clipsheets were mailed...
...In addition to its concern for the school-shackled youth of the nation, the NAM is also on record as opposing a reduction in the working week for children below 48 hours...
...A major target of the NAM propaganda barrage is the youth of the country...
...The NAM in the Schools By Gilbert Geis IT IS more than 20 years now since the Federal Trade Commission first focused an embarrassingly-bright spotlight on the "educational" activities of the private utility crowd...
...The NAM today continues its war for the preservation of industrial laissez-faire...
...6: "Although $30 million was spent in 1948 for industrial films, and their use is growing each day, the surface has hardly been scratched...
...John Dewey, among others, pointed out the weakness of the manufacturers' argument when he asked: "Because some children are backward, shall they be deprived of all benefits of medical attention and supervision and care of the public school and turned over to the tender mercies of the factory owners...
...No better criteria by which to evaluate them can be found than that provided by an NAM official during the Association's 1926 convention who key-noted: "Every activity of this Association . . . must, in the last analysis, be judged by this one standard-does it contribute to the immediate, or ultimate profit of the Association...
...It was "arbitrary, needless, destructive, and dangerous...
...ing Program which calls for "leading industrialists to carry the message of American enterprise before student assemblies at institutions of higher learning across the nation...
...and that this material has become required reading for many students...
...in more than 25,000 public, parochial, and private schools in late October 1949...
...They noted that it is "cruel" to force a child to finish eighth grade when this same child could be doing productive labor under factory supervision...
...It was at Cincinnati in 1895 that the organization adopted a program which stands for "the protection of industrial interests in the United States" and "the dissemination of information among the public with respect to individual liberty and ownership of property...
...The numerous propaganda activities of the NAM, it can be seen, range over a wide area...
...A recent addition to the NAM's youth drive is the College Speak...
...The manufacturers, in typical fashion, issued a booklet...
...and 20,000 copies of "Industry's Views" were distributed...
...that many students are taught the history of the American labor movement from an NAM booklet...
...Propaganda has been defined by Prof...
...A typical letter from a teacher to Trends, the NAM's magazine for "industry-education" cooperation' which goes to 70,000 educators and clergymen, shows the value of this type of propaganda...
...A key to the tremendous propaganda flow from the NAM was provided by an Association leader in 1943 when he explained the effect of the inundation of the public by NAM literature...
...But the private utilities have not been without a vibrant mouthpiece in the larger fields of politics and economics...
...The NIIC [National Industrial Information Committee— a branch of the NAM] will capitalize upon this fact with an aggressive program designed to inspire a crusade which will sweep free enterprise into public favor...
...In this light it is interesting to examine some of the propaganda that the NAM has issued through the years...
...ing Aids, "for planning classroom work," went out to principals and heads of social science department...
Vol. 14 • March 1950 • No. 3
