Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda by John Maxwell Hamilton

Abstract

Reviewed by: Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda by John Maxwell Hamilton Ben Wright Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda. By John Maxwell Hamilton. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020. Pp. 664. Illustrations, notes, sources, index.) Today, the government spends hundreds of millions of dollars paying people to communicate its activities to taxpayers in a positive light. In Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda, John Maxwell Hamilton traces this phenomenon to the First World War, specifically to the work of the Committee of Public Information (CPI). Created shortly after the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, the CPI mixed creativity and chicanery to push Wilson’s messages and impede those of his opponents. Hamilton deftly documents how the CPI commissioned artists, poets, preachers, reformers, journalists, and others to advocate for the war effort across a wide array of forums. From official newspapers and press releases to a proverbial army of “four-minute men” who spoke on street corners, at churches and during theater intermissions, the CPI found ways to stand between the people and the news on behalf of government policy. Under the leadership of the abrasive and chaotic George Creel, the CPI brought murky industries such as advertising and cinema to the fore. Political communication in the United States has never been confined to elections, but the CPI represented, as Hamilton puts it “the evolution of the permanent campaign” (71) whereby voters are engaged by presidents (not presidential candidates) in a constant battle for their hearts, minds, and wallets. Wilson and Creel ultimately fell victim to the same temptations that ensnare all well-meaning propogandists, and Hamilton lays out a litany of sins—partisanship, spin (or “Creeling,” as it was then termed), the chilling of public opinion, noxious Germanophobia, and the wild hubris of public diplomacy abroad—in the run-up to Wilson’s abortive negotiations regarding the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war. While it is hard to find sympathy for Wilson given his odious racial views and obvious narcissism, he and other reformers truly believed in the power of muckraking rhetoric to inform voters and lure them away from the boss politics of the Gilded Age. Furthermore, Maxwell’s focus on the CPI’s political history neglects some of the social and cultural forces unleashed even before American entry into the war. To a large extent, Wilson, Creel, and their cohorts were always riding the tiger. [End Page 325] One of Hamilton’s major claims is that the contemporary information state can trace its roots to the CPI. Such a view neglects how the CPI represented the end of one age as much as the beginning of a new one. Creel relied on established technologies such as the telegraph, the printing press, and progressive ideas long baked into American political culture. Radio would soon revolutionize political communication in the 1920s, casting aside CPI hallmarks such as the four-minute men. Normalcy rather than Wilsonian idealism would dominate the ensuing decade of national politics. Censorship would be a longer-lasting legacy, particularly in relation to World War II; George Roeder’s The Censored War (Yale University Press, 1993) would pair well with Manipulating the Masses on any academic reading list. However, censorship was nothing new in 1917, whereas the failure of governments to control information and their success in manufacturing consent in later wars, whether Vietnam in the 1960s or Iraq in the 2000s, suggest more change than continuity since the Great War. Ultimately, this reader finds Creel to have more in common with Edwin Stanton than Karl Rove. Finally, the absence of Texas from Hamilton’s story is a shame. The Texas State Council of Defense worked with the CPI and other federal entities to mobilize speakers, organize liberty loan drives, and break opposition to the war. Wilson’s postmaster general, Albert Sidney Burleson, played a vital role in war-time censorship of the mails, while Edward House was Wilson’s right-hand man in both Washington and Paris. Both House and Burleson were Texans, and the whole state was deeply animated and divided by the war...