Ivy L. Lee (1877–1934) public relations expert
Lee is generally considered the father of modern public and corporate relations. Born in Georgia, Lee attended Emory University and graduated from Princeton in 1898. After doing postgraduate work at Harvard Law School he dropped out when his money ran out. He then became a newspaperman at the New York Times and the New York World, specializing in business and finance while studying English at Columbia, before opening his own public relations firm.
Along with George Parker, he opened the public relations firm of Parker & Lee in 1904. He then worked on assignment from the Democratic National Committee as a publicist and writer. Lee provided the creative side of the business, while Parker provided the connections and clients. Recognizing a market for corporate public relations in the era of the MUCKRAKERS, Lee began providing the public with the business and industry side of business and social issues as a way of countering the attacks of writers in the press and in books. His method was to provide facts rather than advertising, in the hope that newspaper and journal editors would print both sides of a financial or business story. In 1906, he joined the staff of the Pennsylvania Railroad as a full-time executive in charge of the company’s public relations, which were not in the best of shape. He continued to work for the railroad until 1914.
In 1915, Lee began working for John D. Rockefeller Sr. after the “Ludlow Massacre” in Colorado. The assignment proved successful, and the Rockefellers, like the Pennsylvania Railroad before them, adopted a new, more straightforward public relations policy than in the past. In 1916, Lee opened a new firm. After World War I, his reorganized firm took on many diverse assignments. He worked during the 1920s for greater acceptance of the Soviet Union, believing that a free flow of ideas and greater international understanding of Russia would lead to the demise of communism. He wrote several books on the Soviet Union and on the use of statistics. Throughout this period, he worked for many of the most visible financiers and the largest companies in the country.
During the early 1930s, his firm worked for several Wall Street investment houses that were being investigated at the Pecora hearings in 1933 about the causes of the stock market crash of 1929. A year later, work he had done on an assignment for a German company controlled by the Nazis led to his being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. He died of a brain tumor in 1934 at age 57.
Further reading
- Ewen, Stuart. PR!: A Social History of Spin. New York: Basic Books, 1996.
- Goldman, Eric. Two Way Street: The Emergence of the Public Relations Counsel. New York: Bellman Publishing, 1948.
- Hiebert, Ray E. Courtier to the Crowds: The Story of Ivy Lee and the Development of Public Relations. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1966.
