A Beachhead in the Community

During 1950, several top International Harvester executives traveled across the South and Midwest to participate in town meetings. The purpose of these company-sponsored gatherings was to introduce International Harvester management to community leaders and to encourage the exchange of information and attitudes between com­pany and community. Typically, the company invited about two hundred local people to a luncheon meeting. Guests included pub­lic officials, county agents, local business and professional people, teachers, clergy, members of women's clubs and civic groups, labor leaders, and representatives of the press and radio. Local and divi­sional management officials sat scattered among the guests, serving as hosts at each luncheon table. International Harvester President John L. McCaffrey or Chairman of the Board Fowler McCormick be­gan the meetings with a short talk outlining the company's place in the community and the current state of business. What followed was an opportunity for community leaders, in a "no-holds barred" atmosphere, to ask questions of the "highest authority in the com­pany" about issues ranging from Harvester's attitude on social secu­rity to soil conservation.

According to the company, these forums helped "create an impres­sion of neighborliness" that went far in correcting misunderstand­ings "commonly held about corporations." After one such commu­nity forum, McCaffrey explained that "industry has made a terrible mistake over the years in its failure to interest itself more in the com­munity in which it operates—we want to tell the people in the twen­ty-four communities where we have plants that their problems are our problems." Industry, he declared "can no longer continue to ig­nore the community in which it operates."¹

International Harvester's interest in its plant communities arose from a widely shared fear among postwar employers that they had lost authority not only on the shop floor but also beyond their fac­tory gates. Community sympathy for workers in the 1945-46 strike wave as well as the growing union presence in community agencies sent business alarming signals of public support for liberal values and organized labor. Community, then, took on a new importance for business leaders worried about the decline of corporate power. At the 1948 Congress of American Industries, National Cash Register Com­pany President S. C. Allyn rallied fellow business executives to the struggle, declaring that the community had become "a beach-head for the recapture of American ideals; for the acceptance of industry in its true and ordained role as leading citizen."²

Business strategy in the community followed two intertwined paths. One path was an aggressive public relations effort threaten­ing the decline of American values, morals, and freedoms due to gov­ernment's and labor's attacks on the free enterprise system. This ef­fort was especially vigorous in the period from 1945 to 1952 and was the product of national organizations, in particular the National As­sociation of Manufacturers. However, other business groups and in­dividual firms also joined the crusade against collectivism and state intervention. A second path emphasized business's effort to shape community relations in a more positive fashion. Employing in the community, programs akin to the welfarism and human relations used in the plant, individual companies constructed a more favor­able image of business as a good neighbor. Together, these two fac­ets of community relations aimed to create the proper climate for corporate America.

* * *

Business took labor's community activities much more seriously than subsequent historians have. In the years immediately after World War II, business felt besieged by labor's political and economic pow­er. The community response to the strike wave confirmed employ­ers' fears, epitomizing the crisis facing the continuation of the "Amer­ican way of life," as they perceived it. The growing presence of labor in the community, even if at times only a form of tokenism, served notice to the business community that unions had become a force to be reckoned with in their own backyards. Employers feared that greater union prestige would mean increased union power in the plant. One industrial relations handbook warned of the danger posed by labor's public relations, which sought, it charged, "to keep the community class-conscious." Unions, it contended, wanted to make the public believe that "employers as a class are out to skin the shirts off the backs of workingmen," and that business was "as cold-blood­ed as a fish In a cake of ice."³

Faced with this challenge, the public opinion of the local com­munity became immensely important to business leaders. The com­munity, they believed, was crucial in shaping attitudes and in deter­mining the economic and political environment. Government, which played an increasingly intrusive role in the operation of the econo­my, started at the grass roots in towns and cities. In early 1946, C. C Can* of Alcoa warned that "public opinion of industry takes root where industry lives, and from this root will stem the freedoms grant­ed to industry... or the restrictions imposed upon it." Similarly pub­lic relations consultant James W. Irwin reminded employers that "in our industrial communities we may be made or broken. With the support of our neighbors, who regard industry as a good neighbor, we can win many battles. Without the support of our neighbors, we stand to win none."⁴

Employers matched their efforts to influence the ideas of their work force with a pledge to restore community confidence in business. This required teaching the public about the centrality of the company and the free enterprise system to community well-being. Indeed, these two efforts were closely interrelated; employers saw industrial rela­tions and community relations as overlapping spheres. Worker atti­tudes toward employers served as the base from which communities formed their opinions of business. Advocates of human relations ar­gued that an employer's reputation and influence beyond the plant gates could be built on the goodwill generated by a contented and loyal work force. In turn, they believed that a community favorable to the company could set the boundaries for acceptable worker ac­tivism within the plant. In a sense, they saw corporate community relations as a form of company consciousness writ large.⁵

Not surprisingly, many of the same business leaders who promot­ed human relations and welfarism stood behind the dramatic growth in corporate community relations. Most active were the umbrella business organizations like the National Association of Manufactur­ers, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute and the American Iron and Steel Institute. The NAM'S community rela­tions program, designed to "merchandise" the business story to the public, was the most ambitious and far reaching. It overlapped with community relations campaigns devised by city and regional busi­ness associations, like the Associated Industries of Cleveland, which urged its members to "sell the principles of free enterprise as a real and living force."⁶ Both national and local business organizations provided guidance and support to the many firms who established their own community relations activities in the ensuing decade.

The drive to sell the free enterprise system at the local level also gained momentum from a campaign to arouse communities in de­fense of Americanism. In the late forties and fifties, the major threat was communism. After the war, business had latched upon anticom-munism as a way of strengthening its own appeal and legitimating its attack on liberals and organized labor, whom it tarred as collec-tivists. Business groups joined with veterans organizations, patriotic societies, civic clubs, and religious bodies to battle communism at home. The American Legion, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the American Bar Association, and others formed American­ism departments, charged with exposing and rooting out subversion in communities across the country. In 1948, the Chamber of Com­merce contributed to the struggle by publishing a Program for Com­munity anti-Communist Action, which included directions on how to compile a filing system on local suspects.⁷

If one part of defending Americanism involved exposing its de­tractors, the other part encompassed promoting the values associat­ed with the American way of life. Key were the concepts of individ­ual freedom and liberty. Community organizations mobilized to reaffirm the public's commitment to these values. In 1951, the Elm-ira (N.Y.) Freedom Committee, born in the Elmira Association of Commerce but including civic, religious, veteran, farm, fraternal, youth, and patriotic associations, organized a massive demonstration of community solidarity for "freedom in America." In a community of forty-nine thousand, twenty-five thousand people joined in a mass "Pledge of Allegiance to the Constitution." The pledge read: "Before God and in the sight of my fellow men I reaffirm my devotion and loyalty to the rights and obligations of freedom under law granted by the Constitution of the United States of America, and reassume my personal responsibility to cherish the blessings of liberty and to preserve them undiminished for posterity."⁸

According to defenders of Americanism, communist ideology was the most obvious threat to freedom. Ranking second was economic illiteracy. The often unthinking, apathetic, and misguided citizens that populated America's cities and town were unable to fend off the attacks on industry by labor and government. These attacks under­mined the whole economic order and ultimately the American way of life, business asserted, because the loss of economic freedom and individualism inexorably led to the loss of political and social freedom. Thus, protecting American freedom became intertwined with protecting American business. The General Federation of Women's Clubs sought to cooperate with such business groups as the NAM to orchestrate a defense of industry through education, particularly in communities. "There/' according to GFWC President Mrs. Hiram Houghton, was "where the danger must be met."⁹

The NAM certainly intended to fulfill the GFWC's mandate. Its prewar interest in community relations had consisted mainly of mail­ings and a few regional meetings. But at the end of the war, the NAM began paying increased attention to organizing local communities in support of private enterprise. In 1947, it formed a national Commit­tee on Cooperation with Community Leaders. Goodyear president, E. J. Thomas, a member of the NAM's Public Relations Advisory Com­mittee, stressed the significance of this change in NAM policy: "No amount of activity at the national level—radio talks, advertising, or even 'personal appearances' by a national figure—can take the place of hard work in the home town by local talent." That advice, he ar­gued, "applies to selling a political ticket or selling a product—or in­dustry's point of view."¹⁰

The NAM's program had two closely linked methods. One stressed bolstering business leadership within the community; the other aimed at aiding these reinvigorated business leaders in shaping the local climate of opinion. In mid-1947, the Association launched an Industry Leaders Program, designed to mobilize business leaders as shapers of public opinion in their local communities. The program gave local employers the "factual ammunition and platform tech­niques to become better champions of the American way." To accom­plish this, the NAM formed teams consisting of two experts, one in the field of economics and labor relations and one in the field of public speaking. At the invitation of local employer associations, the NAM representatives offered two-day invitation-only seminars to key industrial leaders. Advance men preceded the team to aid in making local arrangements for the conference.¹¹

NAM experts began each conference by distributing an Industry Leaders Manual, which was to serve as the local business spokesper­son's "bible," providing sources for speeches and panel discussions aimed at local audiences. This loose-leaf "sales kit," was essentially a guide to the NAM's economic and political philosophy and its posi­tion on legislation. It explained the nature and philosophy of the "American Individual Enterprise System" and, through a series of dis­cussion outlines, provided explanations of issues like prices and profits, the relationship between wages and productivity, monopoly in collective bargaining, and the growing pressure toward centralization and government controls. To keep employers current on the changing po­litical scene, the NAM sent all conference participants updated mate­rial with which to amend their guidebooks.¹² The manual also includ­ed instructions on how to sell the free enterprise philosophy. It suggested that appeals should be made to the heart so strongly "that it is not inconsistent with intelligence to act upon it." Indeed, accord­ing to the Industry Leaders guide, people needed to "be led through a thinking process" on the value of contending philosophies.¹³

While the manual provided the "factual" ammunition, the meet­ings whipped up employer enthusiasm and provided practical lessons. NAM experts pointed to opinion polls revealing a crisis. One team member then dramatized "with some wild soap box forensics ... The Voice of the Opposition,'" while the other exposed the fallacies of collectivist philosophies. After discussing issues raised in the manu­al, the participants used it to compose and deliver short speeches. NAM experts and fellow conference members provided businessmen with "coaching in the art of meeting the forensic tirades of the left-wingers with the truth about what has made this nation great."¹⁴

Testifying to business support of the Industry Leaders program was the participation by over nine thousand businessmen in 260 cities during the first two years. The secretary of the Janesville, Wisconsin, Chamber of Commerce reported that program participants were al­most evangelically enthusiastic, "feeling that at last they have been given the weapons with which to do an effective job in the commu­nity." The group, he continued, was "now anxious to follow up as missionaries of the free enterprise system." Similarly, reports from the field convinced NAM official T. M. Brennan that participants were "instilled with an inspired fervor to spread the message of private enterprise."¹⁵

In many communities, the program's graduates followed up the seminar by forming speakers' bureaus. The appearance of manufac­turing executives at grass roots gatherings of organizations like the YMCA and YWCA, Rotary and Exchange clubs, Parent-Teacher Asso­ciations and church groups not only facilitated the spreading of the free enterprise message but also served to strengthen the influence of the local business community. The Tristate Industrial Association of Pittsburgh, for example, formed a bureau of twenty-eight business representatives who had offered their services to "combat false pro­paganda with facts." Similarly, within days of their Industry Leaders conferences, employers in Davenport, Iowa; Bridgeport, Connecticut; and San Diego, California, established speakers' bureaus and reached out aggressively into their local communities. By the end of 1949, 195 local employer associations had developed speakers bureaus.¹⁶

A second, closely related NAM program, also launched in 1947, helped local employers' associations establish comprehensive com­munity public relations programs. Upon request, NAM representatives mapped out a plan of action and aided local employers in such com­munities as Quincy, Illinois; San Diego, California; Tacoma, Wash­ington; and Lynchburg, Virginia. To learn where industry stood in each locale, the program began by recruiting local college students to conduct an opinion survey of the local population.¹⁷ In Reading, Pennsylvania, the Manufacturers Association drew upon the infor­mation generated to organize popular opposition to unions and the local Socialist city administration. To promote a positive image of local industry, the Association created a sports league and encour­aged members to respond to complaints about factory noise, dirt, and unsafe working conditions. To show that employers were more in­terested than union officials in the community, a Community Social Progress Committee publicized the extent of management involve­ment in civic and charitable organizations. Within six months of its implementation, Frederick H. Klein, president of the Manufacturers Association, claimed that local newspapers long partial to labor "now see that all stories about enterprise that are in any way controversial contain management's side of the case."¹⁸

The NAM encouraged employers to direct their message at those groups considered by public relations experts to be the key to mold­ing public opinion. These "thought leaders" included educators, cler­gy, professionals, local officials, and women's leaders. The NAM be­gan publishing periodicals directed at opinion molders: Trends (aimed at educators), and Program Notes (women's club leaders), each had a circulation of forty-six thousand; Understanding (clergymen) had a circulation of twenty-six thousand. Recognizing that women's clubs were an audience of "inestimable potential," the NAM provided pack­age programs to club directors designed to stimulate discussion on issues like federal spending and taxation or the Taft-Hartley Act. The packages included speeches, hints on speaking effectively, sample invitations, and publicity releases.¹⁹

One of the more ambitious of NAM's community-oriented programs attempted to build consensus among large numbers of local opinion leaders through a nationwide series of town meetings. Begun in June 1948, the meetings combined the initiative of local business groups with the organizational support of the national body. The theme of the gatherings was, "Is the System Under Which We Have All Grown-up Worth Saving?" Seven hundred clergymen, educators, women's lead­ers, students, youth leaders, and businessmen from Reading, Lancast­er, York, Harrisburg, and Lebanon attended the first town meeting in Hershey, Pennsylvania. A panel of local businessmen discussed the challenges facing American society and afterward fielded questions from the audience. Over nine hundred of the "most influential lead­ers of community life and opinion" of Providence, Rhode Island, at­tended the next meeting, which was broadcast over the radio. Audi­ences at these meetings raised questions about why industry opposed the guaranteed annual wage, how taxes could be cut when necessary government expenses were so great, and why businessmen denied that organized labor promoted a better standard of living for workers. These questions indicated the work still facing the business community. Nev­ertheless, the NAM concluded that "these local leaders of thought" left the town meetings having rededicated "themselves to the traditional concepts of American liberty."²⁰

On the eve of the 1948 election, the NAM was convinced that its community relations program was reshaping America's political land­scape. But Truman's reelection stunned the NAM, leading it to ques­tion its public relations strategy. Reflecting the members' desponden­cy, Thomas J. Bannan, association director, asked NAM President Wallace F. Bennett "whether we were so far down the road to social­ism that there was no return or whether freedom still existed?"²¹ Some public relations experts argued, however, that Truman's campaign provided proof of the significance of communication efforts target­ing individuals at the local level. The Democrat's victory, they assert­ed, could be attributed to Truman's whirlwind "whistle-stop" train tour and to organized labor's effectiveness in influencing individual members. These were grassroots, face-to-face interactions with the people. According to Public Relations News, Truman's success proved that public relations campaigns could change attitudes.²²

After a period of study and reevaluation, the NAM's Board of Di­rectors and staff vowed to cast aside "defeatist" attitudes. Particular­ly at the community level, the only place where "genuine confidence in industry [can] be engendered," they planned to redouble efforts to convince "the American people that only through the operation of a competitive capitalistic economy can lasting national prosperi­ty and the basic freedoms of the individual citizen be assured."²³ The NAM enlarged the Committee on Cooperation with Community Leaders from 250 to 2,000 leading industrialists in hundreds of cit­ies and towns. These business leaders formed local task forces devot­ed to reshaping public opinion. The NAM's expanded community program featured more town meetings and an intensified industry leaders program, with four instead of two teams of experts in the field.²⁴

Beginning in 1949, Truman's legislative proposals in the fields of agriculture, housing, and health brought a special urgency to the NAM's warnings about state interference in the economy. The Dav­enport, Iowa, speakers bureau presented a panel discussion on "What Price Security?" before the YMCA Men's Club of that city. As a direct result, the club went on record with a resolution "opposed to any legislation which subsidizes government in business or which is de­signed to reapportion the wealth of the nation for the benefit of spe­cial interest groups." The national YMCA then sent this resolution to over three hundred YMCA's Men's Clubs throughout the United States. In Lakewood, Ohio, the NAM town meeting kicked off a "Free Enterprise Week," during which citizens "were given many evidenc­es of the blessings of the system to community and nation."²⁵

In early 1950, the NAM launched one of its most successful com­munity relations efforts in the Southern states, partially in response to the CIO's Operation Dixie, the last major effort to organize South­ern workers.²⁶ The growing public fear of domestic Communist sub­version also contributed to the urgency of effectively reaching the public at the community level. Called the "Roanoke Plan" after the city of its origins, the program was a year-long integrated campaign that brought together tested community relations techniques with the goal of reaching every segment of society. In early January 1950, several business organizations, aided by NAM staff, formed the Roanoke American Way of Life Committee. From February through November, it scheduled weekly activities to create economic under­standing throughout the area. An Industry Leaders workshop opened the schedule and was followed closely by the organization of a speak­ers bureau, which heavily promoted its offerings among civic clubs. Next came a five-week radio round-table of business and economic problems. Spring brought Economic Education Months, featuring a Town Hall Meeting, the distribution of NAM pamphlets and posters to schools, factory tours, and the showing of NAM films to schools, churches, and colleges. During May, the close relationship between community relations and company consciousness became clear as the Roanoke Plan moved into factories, offering NAM-run Employer-Em­ployee Communications Clinics. June was Church Month, with a luncheon for the city's clergy and an introduction of the NAM'S jour­nal, Trends. July and August activities included an industrial exhibit, more radio programs, and films for youth summer camps.

Winding up in the fall, the committee sponsored a Business-In­dustry-Education Day, a new program developed by the NAM and the Chamber of Commerce. On BIE day, schools closed while teachers toured local plants and learned at luncheons or dinners about the part that business played in the welfare of their community. Octo­ber was School and College Month, during which local businessmen participated in vocational guidance forums and spoke to local Roanoke college students about national economic and social trends. The year's program climaxed in November, the "Thanks for Freedom" month, with communitywide meetings, newspaper, radio, church activities, and special school assemblies with business speakers. The program ended with "Thanks for Freedom Sunday" in all Roanoke churches on November 26.²⁷

Such elaborate programs were the exception rather than the rule, but the committee applauded its results: "Roanoke people are talk­ing to their fellow Americans about the values of freedom and the American way of life." Moreover, the Roanoke Plan provided a mod­el of what could be accomplished by business groups.²⁸ Other orga­nizations such as the conservative-moving Chamber of Commerce followed the NAM lead in expanding local public relations. In 1949 the Chamber began its "American Opportunity Program" and later followed it with "Explaining Your Business." These programs provided training, resources, and plans to local chambers for community rela­tions campaigns. Then, in 1954, the Chamber of Commerce began promoting Economic Discussion Groups, which, like the NAM'S ear­lier Industry Leaders Conferences, aimed at developing "articulate, persuasive spokesmen" for business. Between 1955 and 1960, fifteen hundred groups of businessmen—including some organized by such large companies as Caterpillar, Eastman Kodak, and Alcoa—met week­ly for eighteen weeks to discuss economic problems using materials supplied by the Chamber of Commerce.²⁹

Other employer groups believed they could promote their free enterprise vision more effectively if organized independently of es­tablished business organizations. In the immediate postwar years, many of these groups were particularly effective in pushing anticom-munism and linking it to any ideas that business could define as subversive. In 1947, for instance, the New Jersey Manufacturers As­sociation quietly formed the "Work and Unity Group," then denied any connection with it. Believing that Communist cells were burrow­ing throughout the country spreading "poisonous misinformation," the Group vowed to "fight fire with fire." Local businessmen formed "cells" at private luncheons to provide an antidote to left-wing ideas.

Manufacturers Association Director Robert W. Watt explained that his organization was working underground "to set off a chain reaction of public opinion." The group sponsored meetings before church, consumer, and veterans groups, provided speaker kits, and passed out fifty thousand copies of a pamphlet called Free Men or Slaves, which denounced government planning and excess profit taxes.³⁰

Similarly, in 1947 Syracuse, New York, employers formed the Citi­zen's Foundation to avoid being "labeled with any name the public was familiar with." Financial support came from such businessmen as Cloud Wampler of Carrier Corporation, but the Foundation assert­ed that it represented "public spirited citizens," rather than employ­ers. These citizens were appalled by the "apathy" of the general public about America's economic, political, and moral freedoms, which were being swapped "for promises of a life of less personal responsibili­ty." Its active enemies were "communists, their allies and their dupes"; its passive enemies were "ignorance and indifference."³¹ Working behind the scenes, the Foundation's Anti-Subversive Com­mittee stopped the proposed broadcast of "communist-front" pro­grams on a local radio station and exposed the "misuse and abuse" of the names of a score of prominent Syracuse citizens in connec­tion with a Henry Wallace campaign meeting. It also distributed "The Red Package," a folder explaining the evils of Communism to fifty thousand workers. Finally, in a campaign tarring the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers as subversive, the Founda­tion convinced Precision Casting Company workers to reject union­ism altogether.³²

The full range and scope of the business community's public rela­tions efforts can only be suggested here. Included were such cam­paigns as "Forward Hamilton," organized by Hamilton, Ohio, employ­ers and quietly financed by General Motors, Ford, the Lima Hamilton Company, and Champion Coated Paper Company. Forward Hamil­ton mobilized to defeat Mayor Eddie Beckett, a UAW member, and to restore business dominance of the city council. It poured $20,000 into the city election, trumpeting its free enterprise message with car cards, radio time, and an intricate network of small meetings. Simi­larly, Anderson, Indiana, business leaders, supplied with $90,000 by General Motors, organized a group called the American Guard. The Guard claimed to be a "non-partisan patriotic group" formed to "ob­tain good government and worthy office holders by education of the voter," but by late 1949, the American Guard sponsored two radio programs a week attacking socialism and a proposed liberal unem­ployment compensation bill.³³

In addition, individual firms contributed to business's public rela­tions campaigns. Public Relations News found that 11 percent of sur­veyed firms were committed to increasing their community relations budgets for 1948.³⁴ For many, the immediate impetus for action was "the continuing threat to Free Enterprise in our country, the growth of ideas leading to the Welfare State, creeping Collectivism and a con­tinuation of high taxes." For others, like Allegheny Ludlum Steel Company, community support for labor fostered an interest in com­munity opinion. Allegheny Ludlum Steel Company attempted to re­store its reputation by conducting an intensive two-week campaign that included meetings between the entire executive staff of the com­pany and the local "opinion creating people" as well as a series of full-page advertisements touting the company's contributions to the community in all the local papers.³⁵

Although Eisenhower's election in 1952 removed some of the ur­gency from the business community's campaign to sell the free enter­prise system to its neighbors, alarmists remained. In early 1953, Pub­lic Relations Journal reminded employers that the "long, hard battle against socialism was all but lost by business's neglect of its public re­lations opportunities and obligations for many years prior to the de­pression and for a long time after that." It warned that if business slack­ened "in its well-organized efforts to keep the public informed, nothing better can be expected than a swing again to the left—for the forces of bureaucracy and socialism are forever at it—and they are masters of propaganda." But in general, the business message in the commu­nity was less hysterical by mid-decade. However, business interest in community relations, albeit in a slightly different form, continued to grow. One 1956 survey revealed that 70 percent of companies had des­ignated an executive in charge of plant community relations.³⁶

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The flip side of the aggressive selling of the free enterprise system was a community relations strategy emphasizing in a more positive way the need to create a more sympathetic political and economic environment for business. Company involvement in communities was not new to the mid-twentieth century; from the earliest mill vil­lages business had been intimately linked to the communities that produced its labor force and customers. What distinguished the post­war corporate community relations programs was the "degree of con­scious commitment, initiative, organization, and sophistication which companies were now prepared to pour into them."³⁷

Industry's bid to become a good neighbor looked very much like the campaigns to build company consciousness within the plant. One part, the equivalent of welfare capitalism, consisted of philanthrop­ic and welfare activities that provided tangible evidence of company concern for the community. A second part, akin to human relations, emphasized the importance of direct communication with the pub­lic. "We must" declared Frank W. Abrams, chairman of the board of Standard Oil, during a 1950 meeting of the CED's Board of Trustees, "reestablish the common touch with our fellow men. We must reap­pear in the role of warm-hearted human beings—which is what we are." Companies could draw upon the reservoir of goodwill and un­derstanding generated by effective community relations to reestab­lish, in Abrams words, "genuine public acceptance" of the business community's economic leadership.³⁸

A wide range of companies participated in this drive to improve community relations, yet there is no simple formula to predict which firms would develop community programs. Union as well as non­union, large and small, single and multiplant companies practiced community relations. Shortly after the war, for instance, Bigelow-San-ford Carpet Company, Keystone Steel and Wire, Ford Motor Compa­ny, International Harvester, General Foods, and General Electric, to name but a few, organized community relations departments or em­barked upon their first planned community relations program.³⁹

One common factor linking companies with community relations programs was a commitment to human relations within the plant. Companies developing human relations programs saw community relations as an extension of their in-plant activities. In 1948, John L. McCaffery, chairman of International Harvester, advised one works manager that "our community relations are important not only from the standpoint of good public relations but also from the standpoint of good industrial relations within the plant. The general attitude of the community colors, and helps to shape, the attitude of employ­ees themselves towards us." Employers like McCaffery sought to re­capture the sense of identification and common interest that they believed business used to share with its employees and its neighbors.⁴⁰

Company size and plant location were also factors determining level of commitment to community relations. Large multiplant firms created programs hoping to alleviate hostility, which they feared ex­isted toward "foreign owned" branch plants. General Foods found that the "bugbear" of absentee ownership was the attitude of local people who felt that "outfits like ours are big, remote, impersonal money-making machines that take all they can from the community, care little about the individual worker's well-being, and less about the community welfare." A 1953 Bureau of National Affairs survey also found that the level of company community activity varied with the size of the community. While both large and small firms (large defined as over a thousand employees) were likely to develop full-scale programs in mid-size or small cities, generally only large com­panies with greater resources operated community relations programs in metropolitan areas. Small firms doubted their ability to have an impact in large cities like New York or Chicago.⁴¹

The new concern with human and public relations contributed to a growing interest in the decentralization of production away from major industrial cities. Many employers believed that dispersing plants among smaller communities would increase their ability to influence what both workers and the public thought about Ameri­can business. In 1946, Factory pointed out that factory decentraliza­tion promised to solve not only production and distribution prob­lems but also industry's social problems. People in smaller centers were "closer to realities and understand that they cannot have what they do not produce." Many companies further hedged their bets by locating in southern and western states where unions had yet to make much headway.⁴²

So fundamental was the concept of integrating company into com­munity that it affected the appearance of the factory itself. Believ­ing that unsightly plants might irritate neighbors, firms like Bethle­hem Steel and the Borden Company began extensive programs of landscaping and beautification. The Bournville Works of Cadbury Brothers Ltd. created a "suburban landscape" around its factory with "masses of crocuses, daffodils, and flowering trees" that not only lent color to the immediate surroundings of the plant but also made "the grounds one of the beauty spots of the community." Many compa­nies, particularly when building near residential areas, designed new plants so that they blended into the surrounding landscape and ar­chitectural patterns. The streamlined look of the factories of the fift­ies was part of this effort to create within the community a more vi­sually pleasing image of industry.⁴³

Companies often attempted to curry public favor by providing ser­vices and gifts directly to the community. Ansul Chemical Company's community program, begun shortly after World War II, for instance, featured a volunteer emergency rescue squad, trained, equipped and operated at company expense. Yale and Towne Manufacturing Com­pany made its auditorium available to Stamford civic groups for meet­ings. Similarly Caterpillar Tractor Company of Peoria, Illinois, loaned its trucks to the city for clean-up drives and to the Post Office to as­sist in the department's Christmas rush.⁴⁴

Business routinely won friends by supporting local recreation pro-grams. Many companies gave, or leased at a nominal charge, park land to local communities. In 1949, the Peerless Woolen Mills of Rossville, Georgia, the town's leading industry, began a project to build an eight thousand seat stadium, softball and baseball fields, a running track, a field house, and other sports facilities for use by the community as well as company employees. Dow Chemical Compa­ny also generated goodwill by opening its facilities and programs for use by the community. The West Point Manufacturing Company of Alabama made "itself responsible for the recreational activities and general welfare of the 25,000 residents of the area, known as The Valley.'" It provided lighted playing fields, swimming pools, gymna­siums, tennis courts, and croquet lawns, in addition to other facili­ties, to the five towns where West Point mills were located.⁴⁵

Programs for children built goodwill with the local communities of the present and of the future. In 1946, Factory advised manage­ment to learn more about children. "Kids," it contended, "are the biggest common denominator of community life." Nearly everything revolves around the "community's kids." Local industry would do well to get into the orbit if for no other reason than "today's kids are tomorrow's workers."⁴⁶ Sports was a special focus. The Wyandotte Chemicals Corporation conducted a sports program that offered bas­ketball, volleyball, wrestling, boxing, tumbling, weight lifting, and gymnastics in its gymnasium at Wyandotte, Michigan. Companies like General Electric, Olin Industries, Motorola, and North American Aviation, among many others, became closely associated with the developing youth sports movement in the areas of baseball, basket­ball, football, and soccer. In 1947, United States Rubber Company stepped into the Little League baseball picture, promoting the activ­ity nationwide and picking up the cost of the annual World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.⁴⁷

Social programs complemented this outreach to community youths and their families. In 1950, a Bloomfield, New Jersey, Westinghouse plant sought "firmer acceptance of the company as one of the com­munity's good neighbors" by running a Teen Canteen with dancing, games and free refreshments.⁴⁸ About the same time, the Falk Cor­poration and the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, each began sponsoring post-prom parties for area high school students, treating them to a midnight supper, pro­fessional entertainment, and dancing.⁴⁹ Raybestos-Manhattan, Incorporated "carved a solid niche in the town of Stratford," Connecti­cut, when in 1947 it formed the Knot Hole Gang, a club for all chil­dren in the neighborhood of its plant. The club met three times a week under the supervision of volunteer workers from Raybestos. The company also sponsored a Sea Scouts program and eight Little League teams, complete with special field, uniforms, and a banquet at the end of the season featuring a major league ball player as the princi­pal speaker.⁵⁰

Companies not only sponsored activities but also encouraged em­ployee participation in community affairs to promote community acceptance of business and its values. General Electric maintained a file of employees active in civic projects that enabled supervisors to personally congratulate workers on their accomplishments. In some firms, leadership of community organizations was seen as a prereq­uisite for professional advancement. Keystone Steel and Wire of Peo­ria, Illinois, expected its junior executives to take an active role with local groups.⁵¹ The Iron and Steel Institute explained the importance of Keystone's activity. In local social organizations, company repre­sentatives became better acquainted with the community's "thought leaders"—doctors, clergy, merchants, educators, and others. The In­stitute claimed that through the resulting friendships "much of the mystery about what goes on within the walls of the company plant will gradually be dispelled. More important, these people will become missionaries for the company in the community."⁵²

Companies expected their senior executives to sit on the govern­ing boards of community agencies. Business representation on these boards was hardly unique to the period after World War II. As indi­vidual philanthropists, local business leaders had always been the major force in private welfare activities. During the twenties, how­ever, participation shifted from individuals to corporate representa­tives acting as officials of the company. In the postwar decade, this practice increased in the face of labor's challenge. Representation on policy-making boards ensured decision making congenial to business interests and served as a device for changing attitudes in the com­munity toward business.⁵³

Fund-raising provided corporations with a means to acquire greater influence over voluntary agencies while increasing their community prestige. During and after World War II, corporate giving expanded dramatically. Giving rose from 0.35 percent of profits in 1941 to 1.08 percent in 1960. In dollars, this represented a jump from $239 mil­lion to $555 million in the decade after 1948. In part this was a re­sult of war-born profits and tax incentives, but desire for an improved public image was also an important factor.⁵⁴ Corporations, like unions, had played a major part in the National War Fund and were drawn into the fund-raising drives of the Community Chest and other voluntary social welfare agencies. Facing multiple appeals, in the late forties, companies like Ford and U.S. Steel began promoting United Fund drives. Despite some labor participation, businessmen felt these drives consolidated the giving process and provided even greater op­portunity for business control. As these federated fund-raising drives grew larger, executives representing the largest companies assumed leadership by providing both the largest donations and most of the staffing. In 1956, Humble Oil Company lent a full-time staff of one hundred people to organize the United Fund drive in Houston, Tex­as.⁵⁵ Corporations exacted a price for their high levels of support. In most cities, business leaders overwhelmed labor participation and gained a larger voice in the allocation process. Central financing, then, provided "a channel for the expression of business interests in the spending of welfare funds.¹'⁵⁶

Through corporate philanthropy and other welfare activities, com­panies tried to create the image of themselves as benevolent, caring, and trustworthy organizations. They hoped that this positive image would enhance the second part of their community relations strate­gy, communicating with the public on economic and political issues. These communication efforts overlapped with those emanating from the national business organizations like the NAM and the Chamber of Commerce. With the encouragement of these organizations, com­panies attempted to teach the public about the economic principles of the free enterprise system, its superiority, and the necessity for its preservation. They also sought to sell the company itself to the pub­lic. Employers tried to familiarize the public with the products, poli­cies, and objectives of the firm, while also emphasizing the compa­ny's economic support of the community through payrolls, taxes, and contributions. Companies believed that the payoff from greater pub­lic understanding of business would result in increased product sales, improved work force recruitment, and favorable treatment from local governments on issues like taxes or zoning. Finally, companies hoped they could rely on community support in times of labor struggle.

Companies used all sorts of media to send their messages into the community. Institutional advertising surged in the years immediate­ly after World War II as companies made a concerted effort to sell themselves and their values to their neighbors.⁵⁷ In the late 1940s, many ads dealt with the specter of spreading communism and the threats Truman's policies posed to individual freedom. General Electric advertisements, for instance, explained "the facts about hidden taxes" and how "the profit motive is the driving power of our free society." They also made clear that their opposition to "compulsory unionism" was related to what GE decried as the way "Communists seek to get and keep control of labor unions." During 1950, Locke Incorporated of Baltimore sponsored a series of ads warning readers that the "cradle-to-grave security" and the "free medical service" promised by the government meant "socialism—the end of your in­dividual freedom."⁵⁸ The International Nickel Company's Hunting­ton, West Virginia, campaign avoided broader political issues in fa­vor of ads reminding the public that "your Inco friends and neighbors help in many ways to make Huntington a good place to live in." Companies tended to step up advertising just before elections and either before or during strikes, as they went to the public with their side of the issues.⁵⁹

Other advertisements targeted special audiences. Pittsburgh steel companies, for example, wooed friends from the black community with ads in the black press. During 1954, U.S. Steel bought space in the Pittsburgh Courier for the picture of a black supervisor consulting with an assistant superintendent. Below was the statement: "On the production line, in our mills, or in offices, or in transportation, quali­ty people, for a quality product, are our first consideration. Numbered among these people are more than 32,000 Negroes willing and able to perform vital functions as members of a great team dedicated to the service of the nation." Earlier that year, Republic Steel praised "Ne­gro Progress" in an ad stating "Greater Safety and better working con­ditions mean increased security for Republic's sixty-eight thousand employees, thousands of whom are Negroes." The company then pledged its "continued support in helping you continue to progress."⁶⁰

Increasingly, radio, and later television, carried the business mes­sage to the community. Local business associations used radio to showcase industry. In Wisconsin, during the late forties, "The Cav­alcade of Racine Industry" radio program dramatized "the history and romantic growth" of local industry, while the Oshkosh Associated Industries, "Wings of Industry," brought "industry right into the home." Each program focused on a member firm, beginning with a description of the company, the investment required for each em­ployee, and details of plant growth and sales volume. An interview with workers taped "right on the job" created a first-hand view of the part played by industry in community life. According to one employer, the show demonstrated that "what is good for business is good for everybody."⁶¹

Individual firms found radio an effective community relations tool. Some, like the Gerity-Michigan Corporation, simply used radio spot commercials to sell free enterprise. Others associated the company with popular community activities. Armco Steel and the Gardner Board and Carton Company broadcast high school football and basketball games, using the commercial time to explain what the problems, accomplish­ments, and contributions of industry meant to community welfare.⁶² Firms also inaugurated weekly or even daily radio programs in a vari­ety of formats to help integrate the company into the community. The programs of Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, Keystone Steel & Wire Company, and the Mooresville Mills interspersed the sounds, voices, and news of the plant with public announcements of forth­coming community activities. Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company's daily program, begun in mid-1948, included editorials that regularly pointed out the importance of profits in the "American Free Enterprise System," and warned of threats to our "American Way of Life" from those who sought "to undermine the freedom of the individual" by setting up a "Welfare State/' Watch out, the company advised, for gov­ernment handouts, which were the first step toward socialism. Arm­strong Cork's radio program, also launched in 1948, soon reached three of every four listeners in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, region. It mixed company reports with musical entertainment, featuring company em­ployees as well as professionals. In the mid-fifties, Caterpillar compa­ny moved into television with a weekly half-hour Sunday night news, weather and sports program that carried messages about the firm in­stead of product commercials. Timken-Roller Bearing was probably the most ambitious company in the media field, blanketing Ohio with five radio programs.⁶³

Some forms of company communication were similar to mecha­nisms used in the in-plant human relations programs. Two Nebras­ka firms, the Kelly Ryan Equipment Company and the Formfit Com­pany, used stunts, like paying employees in smaller cities and towns with silver dollars. These dollars then circulated among local busi­nesses dramatizing the economic impact of company payrolls.⁶⁴ Com­panies also used plant tours and open houses to educate the com­munity and humanize the factory. Even before World War II, some companies had a tradition of opening their doors and displaying their products to the public. After the war, the number of firms offering tours skyrocketed. Opinion Research Corporation reported that among the companies it surveyed, the number sponsoring tours in­creased from 26 percent to 70 percent between 1948 and 1950. Com­panies widely advertised their open houses and attracted the public with promises of child care, refreshments, and souvenirs. Attendance at some of these events testified to their popularity. In a single day, the Youngstown, Ohio, plants of the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corpora­tion and the Lynn General Electric plant each attracted thirty thou­sand visitors. A three-day open house conducted by the S. D. Warren Company, employing twenty-eight hundred workers manufacturing paper, brought fourteen thousand visitors to Westbrook, Maine, a town of twelve thousand.⁶*

Unlike prewar tours that concentrated primarily on technology, postwar open houses stressed ideas. A. D. LeMonte, of the Mullins Manufacturing Corporation, advised a 1949 conference of public re­lations executives that "the modern open house ... actively, not pas­sively, attempts to create opinions or develop action that eventually will profit the company that's paying the bill." S. C. Allyn of National Cash Register was more blunt about corporate objectives. The goal was to "indoctrinate citizens with the capitalist story." He asserted that "experience shows that people are eager to go through factories; that when they are taken through and given an indoctrination in the sociology of the industrial system, they are able to play back the story with remarkable fidelity."⁶⁶ These new "interpretive" public tours overlapped with those targeted at employee audiences, teaching the same kinds of lessons. The goal was to show plants as working mod­els of capitalism and to point out benefits flowing to people from the free market system.⁶⁷

Like the business associations, individual companies appreciated the role that community leaders or "opinion molders" played in shaping ideas. They sent copies of plant papers or special newsletters to busi­ness, education, club and church leaders. Caterpillar's mailing list in­cluded over six thousand names. Noting that "barber shops were the idea crossroads of America," in 1950 Caterpillar began inviting Peoria barbers to special plant tours, lunches, and discussions to ensure that they could "talk factually about the company and its policies." Other firms sponsored special open houses for teachers, clergy, and doctors.⁶⁸ General Electric, Johnson and Johnson, and Republic Steel established speakers bureaus that addressed the gatherings of these professionals as well as other groups. Over a three-year period Republic Steel repre­sentatives made three thousand talks to an audience of more than one-quarter of a million people.⁶⁹

The occasions that brought together all aspects of corporate com­munity relations were the ceremonies attendant to the opening of new plants or company anniversaries. These events symbolized the mutuality of factory and community. In 1950, Wichita, Kansas, designated a "Coleman Week" with activities honoring Coleman Com­pany's fiftieth anniversary and the founder's eightieth birthday. Big-elow-Sanford Carpet Company's 125th anniversary began with a spe­cial "Influence Group" dinner for 140 leading citizens. An open house attended by 12,000 visitors capped off the celebration which, accord­ing to the company, demonstrated "the high degree of friendship between the company and the town" and "emphasized the interde­pendence of the two for maintaining prosperity in the community."⁷⁰

Typical of a communitywide celebration of a new plant was the dedication in 1952 of the Parker Pen Company plant in Janesville, Wisconsin. A Citizens' Planning Committee, representing business, labor, youth, and women's groups sponsored the event, while school children participated in a contest naming the factory. On opening day "factory whistles tooted" and "church bells rang." Finally, Allegh­eny Ludlum Steel Corporation's 1949 celebration brought together the entire community in the towns of Dunkirk, New York, and West Leechburg, Pennsylvania: schools declared holidays; merchants, who had installed street decoration and window exhibits, closed shops to permit employees to attend the event; volunteer firemen and mem­bers of local civic clubs served as special traffic police; women's clubs set up free babysitting in churches to care for children; high school students and other organizations presented the company with flow­ers; and newspapers printed special editions in which merchants placed congratulatory advertisements.⁷¹ Events such as these epito­mized the intricate connections between business and the commu­nity, particularly in smaller cities and towns.

The business campaign to enmesh itself into local communities attracted the attention of liberals and labor activists. As early as 1946, the sociologist Robert S. Lynd cautioned trade unionists about busi­ness infiltration at the grass-roots level. Lynd observed that the NAM had "suddenly become vastly solicitous about local people." He con­tended that its concern was part of a long-range strategy to system­atically capture grass-roots public opinion. Sympathetic local com­munities, Lynd believed, could be manipulated to provide political support for the people and issues business favored. Business leaders sought to establish in everybody's mind "that 'freedom of initiative' is what America is all about," and "to put labor in the doghouse in public disesteem up and down the Main Streets of the United States— and to keep it there." Of the entire spectrum of the business com­munity's attempt to reshape political culture, Lynd believed that most dangerous of all was this movement "to capture—body and breech­es, mind and soul—the local community."⁷²

Trade unionists responded strongly to the NAM'S early communi­ty relations campaign. In 1946, Irvine Kerrison of the Detroit Teach­ers' union, charged that "high-powered NAM speakers" were appear­ing in the high schools "expounding subtle but effective antilabor and pro-NAM propaganda." Particularly after 1946, when the NAM took the advice of public relations experts and played down its spon­sorship of the local campaign, labor found business propaganda even more insidious. Labor worried that probusiness ideology might be more persuasive if local people thought it originated in the commu­nity. Thus, the CIO charged that ads carrying the names of local busi­ness firms actually were prepared by the NAM. The Guild Reporter published an expose, which was reprinted by a number of other la­bor papers, of the NAM'S attempt to "hoodwink" club women with propaganda. Through program kits distributed to over 36,000 wom­en's club program directors, the NAM planted antilabor speeches, "ostensibly prepared by women who have standing in the commu­nity as the studied opinion of the speakers." The kits, the Guild Re­porter derisively noted, even suggested planting people in the audi­ence to ask specific questions for which the kit provided the answers.⁷³

The Harrisburg Central Labor Union issued broader warnings about NAM underground work. It cautioned: "So watch out for the new look on big business propaganda. Look out also for phony committees which will rise in the community. Pretend to be interested in public welfare and get a lot of publicity in the daily press. ... We must not be fooled by the new line. It must not happen here."⁷⁴

Throughout the fifties, trade unionists worried about industry's "unending efforts to get people to accept its ideas as their own." Unions warned members about the "propaganda" that poured forth from newspapers in the form of institutional advertising and edito­rials. The Connecticut CIO Vanguard, for instance, attacked a series of ads sponsored by an organization of manufacturers called Industries of Naugatuck Valley, which charged that the stockholder got too lit­tle because workers got too much. The UAW reacted as strongly to company community economic education as it did to the in-plant education efforts. In 1955, it warned autoworkers of the ways com­panies used the mass media. They used radio and television, often "to sell the corporation's ideas more than its products." The UAW charged that many huge corporations, which sold only to other com­panies and not to the public, "now sponsor lengthy, expensive pro­grams as well as those featuring news analyses or commentaries." It was not surprising, then, that "the corporation's economic, labor and political ideas turned up on these broadcasts in the form of "com­ments" or commercials.⁷⁵

* * *

Industry's community relations clearly irritated labor, but what tangible benefits did business attain through its increased attentive-ness to community? As with the campaign to reshape workers' atti­tudes within the shop through building company consciousness, employers often had difficulty pointing to specific achievements. Early on, however, some saw an impact in both the political and eco­nomic realms. In 1950, the Associated Industries of Alabama report­ed to the NAM convention on the aftermath of its free enterprise communications program. It claimed that since the inception of the campaign, which stressed the "tremendous federal tax burden cor­porations are carrying," there had been no additional taxes levied on industry by the state legislature. Ohio business leaders could also link campaigns like Forward Hamilton to the surprising reelection of Rob­ert Taft in 1950, despite heavy labor opposition. The business com­munity was also convinced that its efforts within the community were critical to the election of Eisenhower.⁷⁶

Especially in the area of labor relations, business expressed satis­faction with its community relations programs. Within a few years after developing the most ambitious and wide-ranging corporate com­munity relations program, General Electric believed that it had cre­ated a much better understanding among its neighbors of the com­pany's aims, policies, and objectives. Proof, according to GE spokespersons, was the community response to union strife in 1950, 1951, and 1952. It asserted that community leaders urged workers to refrain from striking and, in the few places where plants struck, General Electric claimed "we found public sentiment in our favor." Unlike 1946 "there were no clergymen in the picket lines. Merchants did not go against us. Newspapers did not run stories and editorials against us. Most of them knew about our offer and urged the union to accept it." This, General Electric proclaimed, was "the real pay­off."⁷⁷

Notes

1. Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 19, 1950.

2. S. C. Allyn, "Industry as a Good Neighbor" (Address before the 53rd

Annual Congress of American Industries, Dec. 1, 1948), Accession 1411, NAM, Series I, Box 1 (hereafter Ace. 1411, NAM 1/1).

3. John Cameron Aspley and Eugene Whitmore, The Handbook of Indus-trial Relations, (Chicago: Dartnell, 1952), p. 1104; "Your Community: Labor's New Frontier," NB, Oct. 1954, pp. 29-31, 84-85.

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