George Creel

George Creel (1876-1953), American writer and journalist, was the first propaganda minister in American history.

George Creel was born on Dec. 1, 1876, on a farm in Lafayette County, Mo. His father, Henry Clay Creel, was a former Confederate officer. George spent his boyhood in Missouri, where he attended what public schools were available.

Creel's real education began at 20, when he secured a job as a reporter on the Kansas City World. In 1899 he became editor of the Kansas City Independent. After joining the Progressive wing of the Democratic party, he enjoyed considerable influence in Missouri politics. In 1909 he moved to Denver, Colo., where he edited the Denver Post (1909-1911) and the Rocky Mountain News (1911-1913). His pamphlets for the Democratic National Committee in 1916 brought him to the attention of President Woodrow Wilson, who named Creel chairman of the Committee on Public Information at the outbreak of World War I.

Creel directed the flow of government propaganda on the war and faced, for the first time in the 20th century, the issues of censorship, news manipulation, and the public's "right to know," so important to the freedom of the press in a democratic society. His task was to convince a divided country of the wisdom of Wilson's decision to join the war against Germany. Creel established a system of voluntary press censorship. He refused to distribute information on most of the cruder Allied atrocity stories; instead he blanketed the nation with official information which portrayed the United States as crusading for freedom and democracy to save European civilization from Germany's brutish despoliation. Private American organizations such as the National Security League and the American Protective Association were far less careful in their publications than the Creel committee. Whoever was at fault, the result was an outbreak of war madness unparalleled in American history.

Creel always insisted that private groups rather than the Committee on Public Information were responsible for the wartime hysteria. In three books, How We Advertised America (1920), The War, the World and Wilson (1920), and his autobiography, Rebel at Large (1947), he defended his committee. But he never fully escaped the cloud that World War I cast over his name.

In 1920 Creel retired to private life. In the 1930s he helped moderate Democrats defeat Upton Sinclair's abortive EPIC (End Poverty in California) campaign in California. Creel remained active as a writer, newsman, and national commentator until his death on Oct. 3, 1953.

Further Reading

Creel's autobiography, Rebel at Large: Recollections of Fifty Crowded Years (1947), is the best source for his life. For the Committee on Public Information see James P. Mock and Cedric Larson, Words That Won the War: The Story of the Committee on Public Information, 1917-1919 (1939), and Horace C. Peterson, Propaganda for War: The Campaign against American Neutrality, 1914-1917 (1939). For Creel and the New Deal see Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, especially volume 3, The Politics of Upheaval (1960).

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George Creel

George Creel (December 1, 1876 – October 2, 1953) was an investigative journalist, a politician, and, most famously, the head of the United States Committee on Public Information, a propaganda organization created by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I.

Creel began his career as a reporter for the Kansas City World in 1894 before starting his own newspaper, the Kansas City Independent, in 1899.

He also worked for The Denver Post (1909–1910) and the Rocky Mountain News (1911–1917) before President Wilson made him head of the United States Committee on Public Information during World War I. As head of this organization, he assembled a team of 75,000 public speakers, the "Four Minute Men," to give brief speeches throughout the country in favor of the War.

He published his memoirs of the experience, How We Advertised America, in 1920, and would write 14 other books during his lifetime. He described American propaganda by saying "Our effort was educational and informative throughout, for we had such confidence in our case as to feel that no other argument was needed than the simple, straightforward presentation of facts." ^[1]

Creel was known to have said "expression not repression" about censorship. Creel gathered the nation's artists to create thousands of paintings, posters, cartoons, and sculptures promoting the War. He also gathered support from choirs, social clubs, and religious institutions to join "The Worlds Greatest Adventure In Advertising." He recruited about 75,000 "Four Minute Men," who spoke about the War at social events for an ideal length of four minutes, considering that the average human attention span was judged at the time to be four minutes. They covered the draft, rationing, bond drives, victory gardens and why America was fighting. These men thereby helped to maintain the nation's morale. It was estimated that by the end of the war, they had made more than 7.5 million speeches to 314 million people.

Creel wrote books as well as speeches. How the War Came to America, translated into many languages, sold almost seven million copies and included Wilson's war message. He created pamphlets that were handed out with help from the Boy Scouts of America. Almost 60 million pamphlets, booklets, and leaflets were distributed. Although not all people changed their minds about the War due to his efforts, he succeeded in reaching the people.

He served on the San Francisco Regional Labor Board in 1933 and became chairman of the National Advisory Board of the Works Progress Administration in 1935.

He was an active member of the Democratic Party and ran against the novelist Upton Sinclair for the post of Governor of California.

He was married to Blanche Bates from 1912 until her death in 1941.^[2] Afterward, Creel resided at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco.^[3]

References

1. ^ How We Advertised America, p.3, citation according to Mark Crispin Miller
2. ^ Blanche Bates at the Internet Movie Database
3. ^ Taft, Robert Alphonso; Wunderlin, Clarence E. The Papers of Robert A. Taft: 1949-1953, Kent State University Press, 2006, p. 435. ISBN 0873388518

Works

• George Creel: How We Advertised America, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920
• The Committee on Public Information (Author): How the War Came to America

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