The Birth of Modern Public Relations: From the Industrial Revolution to Pioneers like Bernays

Public relations – the art of shaping how an organization is perceived – did not emerge from a boardroom decision or a university curriculum. It grew out of necessity: the messy, urgent, often chaotic need of powerful institutions to manage their image in a world where the public was increasingly paying attention. To understand how modern PR was born, you need to go back to factories, steam engines, railway accidents, and some remarkably shrewd individuals who figured out, often before anyone else, that managing public opinion was a profession in itself.

The Industrial Revolution: when image management became urgent 🔗

The Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries fundamentally altered the relationship between institutions and the public. Factories replaced farms. Corporations accumulated wealth and power on an unprecedented scale. And yet, as these entities grew, so did public mistrust. Workers were exploited, accidents were covered up, and corporations operated behind a wall of secrecy with a collective “public be damned” attitude.

Two technological forces broke that wall open: the telegraph and the high-speed printing press. Suddenly, news could travel across a country in minutes, and cheap newspapers reached millions of readers. A factory fire, a labor strike, a rail accident – all of it could now become national news within hours. This new information velocity created a new kind of pressure on businesses and governments: the pressure of public opinion. They needed to respond, explain, and persuade. That need is the seed from which modern PR grew.

P.T. Barnum: the age of the press agent 🔗

Before PR became an ethical profession, it was a spectacular circus – sometimes literally. P.T. Barnum (1810-1891), the famous American showman, was one of the first people to systematically exploit the power of media to shape public perception. Barnum used dramatic, exaggerated messaging and stunts to draw attention to his American Museum and traveling circus, and he operated on the belief that any publicity – good or bad – was better than none.

His most notorious stunt was the Feejee Mermaid of 1842. Barnum arranged for anonymous letters to be sent to New York newspapers describing a “Dr. J. Griffin,” an English naturalist who possessed a genuine mermaid caught near the Fiji Islands. The letters were a complete fabrication – Dr. Griffin was actually Levi Lyman, Barnum’s accomplice. Once public curiosity reached a fever pitch, Barnum “reluctantly” secured the mermaid for his museum. The exhibit itself was far less glamorous than advertised – a small, withered creature made from a monkey’s head stitched to a fish tail – but ticket receipts at Barnum’s museum tripled.

What Barnum demonstrated, even through deception, were core PR instincts: manufacture a story, build anticipation, use the press as an amplifier, and control the narrative. While his tactics were often based on deception, they showcased the power of creating buzz, controlling narratives, and building public curiosity. He is rightly called the prototype of the modern press agent – influential, but deeply unethical by today’s standards.

Ivy Lee and the Declaration of Principles: truth as a PR strategy 🔗

The shift from Barnum’s manipulation to something more principled came in the early 20th century, largely through one man: Ivy Ledbetter Lee (1877-1934). Lee is often considered the founder of modern public relations – a figure who flipped the dominant script from “fool the public” to “inform the public.”

The Declaration of Principles (1906) 🔗

In 1906, while representing coal mine operators during a labor strike, Lee found that newspapers were hostile to the materials his firm was distributing, accusing him of disguised advertising. In response, Lee issued his “Declaration of Principles,” which he sent to all newspapers, stating that his firm’s work was done openly, aimed to supply news rather than advertising, and committed to providing prompt and accurate information on subjects of public interest. Business writer Eric F. Goldman later wrote that this statement marked the moment the public was no longer to be fooled or ignored, but to be genuinely informed.

The Declaration was the first document to formally embed ethics into the practice of PR, and it was also the first to draw a clear line between a press agent (who might deceive) and a PR professional (whose job was to keep the public accurately informed).

Crisis management: the Pennsylvania Railroad accident 🔗

Lee’s principles were tested almost immediately. On October 28, 1906, a Pennsylvania Railroad train derailed off a bridge in Atlantic City, killing over 50 passengers. The railroad’s first instinct was to lock down access and say nothing. Lee took the opposite approach: he sent out a formal statement to the press on the company’s behalf and organized a train to take reporters directly to the scene of the incident. He provided lists of the dead and injured, gave journalists access to executives, and issued what is now considered the world’s first press release. The New York Times printed it without modification.

The result was groundbreaking. By being proactive and transparent, the railroad earned media goodwill rather than suspicion. Many historians label Lee the originator of modern crisis communications for this precise reason. His later work rehabilitating the public image of John D. Rockefeller – by inviting newsreel reporters into Rockefeller’s private world and regularly issuing announcements about his philanthropy – further cemented his reputation as someone who understood that authentic public goodwill had to be earned, not manufactured.

Edward Bernays: the scientific approach to public opinion 🔗

If Ivy Lee established that honesty was good PR strategy, Edward Bernays (1891-1995) went several steps further by arguing that public opinion itself could be scientifically engineered. Widely eulogized as the “father of public relations” at his death in 1995, Bernays played a major role in defining the industry’s philosophy and methods. He was also, notably, a nephew of Sigmund Freud – a connection that shaped his entire approach to communication.

Crystallizing Public Opinion and the psychology of persuasion 🔗

His 1923 book Crystallizing Public Opinion was praised as a pioneering study of the importance of public opinion, and it outlined a systematic approach: identify the psychological needs and desires of the public, then craft communication that connects your client’s cause or product to those needs. Bernays drew heavily from theorists like Gustave Le Bon and Walter Lippmann, and from his uncle Freud’s insights into unconscious motivation. He believed the public was primarily emotional and irrational – and that this was precisely why skilled communicators were necessary to guide public behaviour.

The “Torches of Freedom” campaign 🔗

Bernays’ most famous – and most debated – campaign illustrates both the genius and the ethical danger of his approach. In 1929, the American Tobacco Company hired him to break the social taboo against women smoking in public. Bernays consulted psychoanalyst A.A. Brill, who told him that cigarettes represented a symbol of emancipation for women whose feminine desires were increasingly suppressed. Bernays rebranded the cigarette as a feminist statement – a “torch of freedom.”

The campaign’s centerpiece was the Easter Sunday Parade of March 31, 1929. Bernays arranged for a group of young women to march down New York’s Fifth Avenue smoking cigarettes, framed as a spontaneous act of protest by emancipated women. Neither Bernays nor American Tobacco were mentioned by name. Scores of newspapers ran the story as genuine news. The campaign became a landmark in PR history – a demonstration of how a manufactured event, or pseudo-event, could shift cultural norms and drive consumption. It is also a cautionary tale: Bernays later acknowledged the harm that tobacco caused, even as his campaign helped normalize smoking among women.

The “Bacon and Eggs” campaign 🔗

A less discussed but equally illustrative campaign was Bernays’ work for the Beech-Nut Packing Company. Tasked with increasing bacon sales, he consulted physicians and secured their endorsement for the idea that a hearty breakfast – specifically bacon and eggs – was healthier than a light one. He then distributed this “medical opinion” to thousands of doctors, who passed it on to their patients. The result was a national shift in breakfast habits, engineered entirely through third-party authority and psychological association. It remains a textbook example of how Bernays linked products to trusted symbols rather than relying on direct advertising.

The development of PR in India 🔗

India’s encounter with organized public communication did not begin with corporations – it began with colonialism and resistance to it.

British colonial propaganda and the press 🔗

The British colonial administration used communication strategically to manage public perception and maintain control. William Augustus Hickey brought out the first newspaper in India in 1780 primarily to serve the interests of European settlers in Calcutta. Over time, newspapers became tools of both imperial propaganda and anti-colonial resistance. The colonial government set up publicity boards during World War I to manage war-related messaging and, in 1919, established the Central Bureau of Information – the forerunner of today’s Press Information Bureau.

Gandhi: India’s first PR genius 🔗

The most consequential communicator in Indian history – and perhaps the most sophisticated practitioner of PR principles without ever using the term – was Mahatma Gandhi. The outstanding example of a master communicator in the present century, Gandhi was known for his strong character, rational thinking, and ability to rouse emotions and desirable sentiments among people.

Gandhi’s approach was built on symbols, media events, and owned media. The charkha (spinning wheel) was a powerful visual symbol of self-reliance and economic resistance to British textiles. The 1930 Dandi Salt March was a masterclass in staged political theatre – a simple, non-violent act of making salt that made the abstract injustice of the British salt tax viscerally visible to audiences in India and internationally. Gandhi started English and vernacular newspapers as communication tools for building public opinion in favour of independence – publications like Young India and Harijan allowed him to speak directly to the public, bypassing colonial media gatekeepers. In PR terms, this is exactly what today’s professionals call “owned media.”

The founding of PRSI and the professionalization of Indian PR 🔗

After independence in 1947, India’s growing economy and expanding public sector created a clear demand for professional communicators. Corporate houses like Tata were early movers – Tata opened its first public relations office in 1943 and offered the first formal course in public relations in 1958.

That same year, a defining institutional milestone was reached. The Public Relations Society of India (PRSI) was established in 1958 to promote the recognition of public relations as a profession and to formulate its objectives as a strategic management function. Beginning as an informal body of practitioners headquartered in Mumbai, it was formally registered in 1966 under the Societies Act, with Kali H. Mody as its first national council president. The first All India PR Conference was held in Delhi in 1968, at which the profession’s Code of Ethics was formally adopted – and April 21 was declared National Public Relations Day in India.

Today, PRSI operates through 23 regional chapters and is recognized by the International Public Relations Association as India’s national PR organization, as well as being a founding member of the Global Alliance of Public Relations and Communications Management.

From Barnum to Bernays: what the birth of PR teaches us 🔗

The evolution from P.T. Barnum’s sensational hoaxes to Ivy Lee’s ethical transparency to Bernays’ psychological engineering is not just a historical arc – it is an ongoing tension at the heart of the PR profession. Every era produces communicators who must decide: do we inform the public, or do we manage them? Lee’s answer was clear. Bernays’ was more complicated. And Gandhi’s – rooted in truth as a strategic and moral force – may be the most enduring of all.

The birth of modern public relations was not a single event. It was a slow accumulation of crises, responses, experiments, and principles that gradually shaped a profession – one that continues to negotiate the boundary between persuasion and manipulation every day.

What do you think? As public relations increasingly moves onto digital and social platforms, do Ivy Lee’s principles of transparency and accuracy remain viable – or has the information environment made Bernays’ model of managing perception more dominant? And considering Gandhi’s use of symbols and owned media to build mass movements, how differently might he have operated in today’s world of social media?

References

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