CHAPTER II
THE INTERLAPPING GROUP FORMATIONS OF SOCIETY, THE CONTINUOUS SHIFTING OF GROUPS, CHANGING CONDITIONS AND THE FLEXIBILITY OF HUMAN NATURE ARE ALL AIDS TO THE COUNSEL ON PUBLIC RELATIONS
The public relations counsel works with public opinion. Public opinion is the product of individual minds. Individual minds make up the group mind. And the established order of things is maintained by the inertia of the group. Three factors make it possible for the public relations counsel to overcome even this inertia. These are, first, the interlapping group formation of society; second, the continuous shifting of groups; third, the changed physical conditions to which groups respond. All of these are brought about by the natural inherent flexibility of individual human nature.
Society is not divided into two groups, although it seems so to many. Some see modern society divided into capital and labor. The feminist sees the world divided into men and women. The hungry man sees the rich and the poor. The missionary sees the heathen and the faithful. If society were divided into two groups, and no more, then change could come about only through violent upheaval.
Let us assume, for example, a society divided into capital and labor. It is apparent on slight inspection that capital is not a homogeneous group. There is a difference in point of view and in interests between Elbert H. Gary or John D. Rockefeller, Jr., on the one hand, and the small shopkeeper on the other.
Occasions arise, too, upon which even in one group sharp differences and competitive alignments take place.
In the capital group, on the tariff question, for example, the retailer with a net income of ten thousand dollars a year is apt to take a radically different position from the manufacturer with a similar income. In some respects the capitalist is a consumer. In other respects he is a worker. Many persons are at the same time workers and capitalists. The highly paid worker who also draws income from Liberty Bonds or from shares of stock in industrial corporations is an example of this.
On the other hand, the so-called workers do not consist of a homogeneous group with complete identity of interests. There may be no difference in economic situation between manual labor and mental labor; yet there is a traditional difference in point of view which keeps these two groups far apart. Again, the narrower field of manual labor, the group represented by the American Federation of Labor, is frequently opposed in sympathies and interests to the group of Industrial Workers of the World. Even in the American Federation of Labor there are component units. The locomotive engineer, who belongs to one of the great brotherhoods, has different interests from the miner, who belongs to the United Mine Workers of America.
The farmer is in a class by himself. Yet he in turn may be a tenant farmer or the owner of an estate or of a small patch of tillable soil.
That group so vaguely called “the public” consists of all sorts and conditions of men, the particular kind or condition depending upon the point of view of the individual who is making the observation or classification. This is true likewise of great and small subdivisions of the public.