Public Opinion and Worker's Rights
While the Atlantic City rail disaster wasn’t necessarily the fault of the Pennsylvania Railroad company, they were able to spare themselves the backlash that would have otherwise been created from the event. But, as we look forward a few years, the use of public relations becomes far more insidious.
The Ludlow Massacre occurred just 6 years after the train incident. 1200 striking miners were attacked by the National Guard dispatched by the Colorado Fuel and Oil Company, resulting in the deaths of nearly 24 strikers and their families. In retaliation, the strikers attacked nearby mines and plants, destroying equipment and frequently skirmishing with the National Guard. The total death toll would reach over 100 miner’s lives, and was described as the “deadliest strike in American history.”
It was a turning point in Corporate and Labor relations in America. The Rockefellers, who owned the mine, were criticized for the event, but public opinion was never officially rested on either side. Ivy Lee was actually employed by the Rockefellers to handle the public relations front, but, rather than employing fact as an ally for Standard Oil, he basically used propaganda to turn opinion against the strikers. In an attempt to mitigate public distaste, Lee released a press statement with an open faced lie, saying that a majority of the strikers had actually died from their own devices, as “a stove had turned over.” This lead to Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle, and various other socialist leaning works, to dub Lee, “Poison Ivy Lee.”
The control of information regarding the strike, and its ensuing massacre, brought to light that, while public relations could be used in conjunction with advertising, it was driven by a near propaganda-like idealogy. The ability for the National Guard to murder that number of strikers simply for corporate interest is upsetting, but attests to the power of public relations. There’s a moment in The Big Money, where Mary French and Jerry Burnham discuss the power of control at that level:
“But, Jerry, how can you stand it? If the State of Massachusetts can kill those two innocent men in the face of the protest of the whole world it’ll mean that there never will be any justice in America ever again.” “When was there any to begin with?” he said with a mirthless giggle…”But there’s something so peaceful, so honest about them; you get such a feeling of greatness out of them. Honestly they are great men.” “Everything you say makes it more remarkable that they weren’t executed years ago.” (Dos Passos 362)
To not be held accountable for death because of the power of wealth, and the money to control the opinion of any event, the working class cannot compete. By labeling strikers as foreigners, demagogues, and socialists, to journalists (if not just outright owning the newspapers, like the Colorado Fuel and Oil Company, corporate public relations would never allow full public sympathy. Thus, the deaths of so many strikers in the period, though morose, were never actually accounted for. Morse mentions that a group of miners, who had participated in a failed strike a few years prior, in its regard: “The miners have admitted that the campaign of publicity carried on by the operators was the most ready weapon used against them” (Morse 460). So, where does public opinion lie? Mary dreams of “warm reassuring voices like Ben Compton’s when he was feeling well…telling her that Public Opinion wouldn’t allow it that after all Americans had a sense of Justice and Fair Play that the Workingclass would rise,” but the outcome of the novel is anything but reassuring (Dos Passos 363). The image of the vagrant wandering in the turbidity and turbulence in the face of modernity suggests not just an alienation, but a defeat.