It is interesting in this connection to note that a newspaper uses the same methods to encourage interest in itself as do others. The New York Times promoted public interest in heavier-than-air-machines by creating sporting issues of contests between aviators on altitude records, continuous stays in the air, distance flying and so forth.
Mr. Lippmann comments on this same characteristic:
“But where pugnacity is not enlisted, those of us who are not directly involved find it hard to keep up our interest. For those who are involved the absorption may be real enough to hold them even when no issue is involved. They may be exercised by sheer joy in activity or by subtle rivalry or invention. But for those to whom the whole problem is external and distant, these other faculties do not easily come into play. In order that the faint image of the affair shall mean something to them, they must be allowed to exercise the love of struggle, suspense, and victory.”[29]
We have to take sides. We have to be able to take sides. In the recesses of our being we must step out of the audience onto the stage and wrestle as the hero for the victory of good over evil. We must breathe into the allegory the breath of our life.
Recently a philanthropic group was advised to hold a prize fight for charity. This recognition of the importance of the principle of pugnacity was correct. It is a question whether the application was not somewhat ill advised and in bad taste. The Consumer’s Committee of Women opposed to American Valuation was avowedly aligned to fight against a section of the tariff presented by Chairman Fordney. The Lucy Stone League, a group who wish to make it easy for married women to maintain their maiden names, dramatized the fight that they are making against tradition by staging a debate at their annual banquet.
Very often the public relations counsel utilizes the self-display-elation motive and draws public attention to particular people in groups, in order to give them a greater interest in the work they are espousing. It is often found to be true that when a man’s adherence or allegiance to a movement is lukewarm and he is publicly praised for his adherence to it, he will become a forceful factor in it. That is why the intelligent hospital boards name rooms or beds after their donors. It is one of the reasons for the elaborate letterheads so many of our philanthropic organizations have.
Self-abasement and subjection, its attendant emotion, are seldom called upon. On the other hand, parental love and tenderness are continually employed, viz., the effort of the baby-kissing candidate for public office or the attempt to popularize a brand of silk by having a child present a silk flag to a war veteran at a public ceremony. The whole flood of post-war charity-drives was keyed to this pitch. The starving Belgian orphan personified in every picture, the starving Armenian, and then the hungry Austrian and German orphans appeared, and the campaigns all succeeded on this issue. Even issues where the child was not the predominant factor used this appeal.
Four other instincts are listed in this classification—gregariousness, individualism, acquisition and construction. We have already dealt with the first at length.
The gregarious instinct in man gives the public relations counsel the opportunity for his most potent work. The group and herd show everywhere the leader, who because of certain qualifications, certain points that are judged by the herd to be important to its life, stands out and is followed more or less implicitly by it.
A group leader gains such power with his group or herd that even on matters which have had nothing to do with the establishment or gaining of that leadership he is considered a leader and is followed by his group.