Credit Men, the Silk Association of America and some seventy-four others, includes among its associations’ functions such activities as the following: coöperative advertising; adjustments and collections; cost accounting; a credit bureau; distribution and new markets; educational, standardization and research work; exhibits; a foreign trade bureau; house organs; general publicity; an industrial bureau; legislative work; legal aid; market reports; statistics; a traffic department; Washington representation; arbitration. It is noteworthy that forty of these associations have incorporated public relations with general publicity as a definite part of their program in furthering the interests of their organizations.
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company devotes effort to studying its public relations problems, not only to increase its volume of business, but also to create a coöperative spirit between itself and the public. The work of the telephone company’s operators, statistics, calls, lineage, installations are given to the public in various forms. During the war and for a period afterwards its main problem was that of satisfying the public that its service was necessarily below standard because of the peculiar national conditions. The public, in response to the efforts of the company, which were analogous to a gracious personal apology, accepted more or less irksome conditions as a matter of course. Had the company not cared about the public, the public would undoubtedly have been unpleasantly insistent upon a maintenance of the pre-war standards of service.
Americans were once wont to jest about the dependence of France and Switzerland upon the tourist trade. To-day we see American cities competing, as part of their public relations programs, for conventions, fairs and conferences. The New York Times printed some time ago an address by the governor of Nebraska, in which he told a group of advertising men that publicity had made Nebraska prosper.