Public Relations Review 30 (2004) 205–215

Comparing two public relations pioneers:

American Ivy Lee and British John Elliot
Shirley Harrison1 , Kevin Moloney∗
Bournemouth Media School, Bournemouth University, Weymouth House, Talbot Campus,
Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset BH12 5BB, UK
Received 18 August 2003; received in revised form 6 November 2003; accepted 5 January 2004

Abstract

A comparison of the careers of two pioneering public relations professionals suggests that their work content
in the first quarter of the last century and that of modern professionals is much the same. John Elliot was the first
Briton to carry the title ‘public relations officer’ and he knew of Ivy Lee when working in New York as a reporter.
Research shows that they faced operational problems and responded with techniques recognisable to today’s public
relations industry, although their professional vocabulary was different. This timeline of common experience over
almost a century allows us to see public relations people as a community of professionals, and thus to explore how
knowledge of the past can inform the present.
© 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Public relations officer; Professional; Corporate identity

1. Introduction

The American Ivy Lee is extremely well known to public relations professionals who muse about
how their work has developed, the Briton John Elliot—first person in the UK known to hold a post with
‘public relations’ in the title—much less so. The asymmetry is justified given the foundational role of
American practice, the more advanced historiography about it, and the earlier timing and contemporary
impact of Lee’s career. But a little rebalancing is now justified for several reasons. The UK was an early
importer of American practice and it is interesting to see whether it transplanted or transmuted. There is,

∗
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-1-202-5955-44; fax: +44-1-202-5950-99.
E-mail address: kmoloney@bournemouth.ac.uk (K. Moloney).
1
Formerly of Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.

0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2004.01.001
206 S. Harrison, K. Moloney / Public Relations Review 30 (2004) 205–215

moreover, hardly any history written of British public relations: the work of Jacquie L’Etang in the field
is therefore original and responds to a growing intuition that retrospection is timely for the development
of UK academic study of public relations. Finally, looking at illustrious others in the field of investigation
is . . . well, just fun. But if that quality is insufficient justification for any serious interest, it may be that
these early professionals did things in the first three decades of the last century which make us understand
how and why PR practice is as it is today.

2. Method

John Elliot was an active PR professional from 1925 to 1933 (and then a marketing and general manager
with responsibility for the function until 1939) with the Southern Railway company of Britain which
served the south coast from London. Ivy Lee first began working in public relations for the Citizens’
Union in 1903, founding his own consultancy in 1905. He continued working as a public relations
consultant with various partners until his death in 1934. His firm took on many prominent clients, among
them the Pennsylvania Railroad, John D. Rockefeller, Sr. and Jr., various investment houses, industrial
organisations, and philanthropic institutions.
In making comparisons between the professional lives of these two early public relations practitioners a
number of comparators have been used, such as work in journalism, public relations for railway companies,
principles of public relations, strategy and tactics. However, it should be noted that there are differences
in the way in which the research has been carried out on the two practitioners.
In Elliot’s case the main sources used, a 1960 interview and one of his books (published in 1982),
are retrospective accounts of the 1920s and 30s written up several decades later. They raise the his-
toriographical problem of Elliot’s contemporary understanding of public relations colouring his ac-
count of his own past practice of it: the problem that he used contemporary terms to measure the
past.
The textual evidence from his use of the word ‘propaganda’ and the absence of most modern terminology
suggests, however, that he did not use current descriptors retrospectively. He used the ‘p’ word differently
from us and he did not use descriptors which we would today: ‘media relations’, ‘corporate advertising’,
‘corporate identity’, ‘consumer PR’, ‘lobbying’, and ‘issues management’ are missing from his account.
The judgement is that he was not eliding time periods and from this separation, today’s professionals can
perhaps seek insights. They can examine Elliot’s work opportunities and problems, responsive strategies
and tactics and ask whether these work phenomena exist today and what terms are used now to describe
them. From the evidence set out below, moderns will see their present work foreshadowed in Elliot’s
career which started 75 years ago.
The account of Lee’s career is largely put together from original source material of the time so that the
potential difficulties referred to above do not apply. Where present day references are given they offer
the opinions of current authors on Lee and his work rather than Lee’s retrospective view of his own early
work. In fact Lee died suddenly at the age of 57, and although his views on public relations were published
in the form of books, pamphlets and speeches at the time, he never published an autobiographical work.
(Ray Hiebert’s biography was published 32 years after Lee’s death.)
Ivy Lee’s personal papers were donated by the Lee family to Princeton University in the 1950s but
client material from Ivy Lee Associates remained confidential until 1978 when T. J. Ross Associates,
the successor to Ivy Lee Associates, donated the material which now forms the bulk of the collection:
 S. Harrison, K. Moloney / Public Relations Review 30 (2004) 205–215 207

the client files and Matter Sent Out (MSO). The material on Lee in this paper is the result of research
by Shirley Harrison in the Ivy Lee archive, now located in Princeton University Libraries’ Department
of Rare Books and Special Collections at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, and draws largely on
original sources from Lee’s previously unpublished MSO files.

3. Aspects of the early growth of pubic relations

Ivy Lee and John Elliot were pioneers of modern public relations practice. Before Lee, American
public relations practice was the province of ‘the old-time snake oil peddlers’ (Olasky, 1987, p. 5).
Before Elliot there was simply publicity and ‘communications with the press’ (Simmons & Biddle, 1999,
p. 403). Lee and Elliot saw the value of planned, public communications where previously there had
been silence and secrecy, and thus laid the foundations of the public relations profession as it is practised
today.

3.1. Lee

Lee was arguably the first true public relations practitioner in the USA. He believed that PR could
provide both ideological and managerial benefits to big business. Having come from a background in
business journalism, where he had become adept at explaining the complicated workings of business
in a way which readers could understand, he believed he could help businesses and the general public
understand each other better by acting as counsel ‘in the court of public opinion’ (Hiebert, 1966, p. 185).
Thus, the term ‘public relations counsel’ was coined.
Lee had good Establishment connections, some of which were made during his education at an ivy
league university, and he was asked to act as public relations adviser to the influential Guggenheim family
interests in mining and metallurgy. Lee and the young Harry F Guggenheim were both enthusiastic about
modern technology and particularly interested in aviation. They persuaded Guggenheim senior to endow
a fund for the promotion of aviation: Harry was made president and Lee its public relations counsel in
January 1926 (see Harrison, 2000). Lee also worked for the Rockefeller family.

3.2. Elliot

Elliot was the first person known to be called a ‘public relations officer’ in Britain and his professional
life illuminates some of the social and commercial features which marked the start of public relations
in the UK. These were: its American provenance; the ideological and managerial benefits it offered big
businesses and public enterprises, and the Establishment connections of many of the early pioneers. These
connections arose from his family background, his private education and from his (albeit brief) career in
a fashionable regiment.

4. Careers

There are interesting parallels to be drawn between the background and working lives of Lee and Elliot.
Both were well educated and showed intellectual promise; both went into journalism because they did not
208 S. Harrison, K. Moloney / Public Relations Review 30 (2004) 205–215

have enough money to continue with their preferred careers; both worked for railway companies as their
first public relations officer; both moved on from tactical public relations campaigns to making general
management policy.

4.1. Lee

Ivy L. Lee was born in Cedartown, Georgia on July 16, 1877. He grew up and went to school in Atlanta,
Georgia and St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Emory College in Atlanta for two years and then transferred
to Princeton University from which he graduated with a first in economics in 1898. While at Princeton,
Lee was active on the college newspaper. He went on to do post-graduate work at Harvard and Columbia
Universities but was unable to complete his studies owing to lack of funds. Instead he entered newspaper
work. He was a journalist at the New York American, the New York Times, and the New York World, using
his knowledge of economics to write about business and financial affairs.
Lee’s first work in public relations was in Seth Low’s unsuccessful mayoral campaign. There followed
a press job with the Democratic National Committee and in 1904 he set up in partnership with George
Parker, another ex-journalist, as one of the earliest public relations companies. In 1906, aged 29, he was
retained by the Pennsylvania Railroad as ‘Publicity Counselor’. The railroad had a policy of refusing
access to the press at accident sites and refusing to grant interviews. This policy led to reporters’ distrust
of the railroad, which manifested itself in print and led in turn to distrust on the part of the general
public. Lee addressed this problem by providing information to the press and inviting reporters to travel
to accident sites. He subsequently joined the Pennsylvania Railroad full time and worked for the company
until the outbreak of war in 1914.
In 1910 Lee visited London and delivered a series of lectures at the London School of Economics
on railroads. On December 1, 1912 he became executive assistant to the president of the Pennsylvania
Railroad. This position gave Lee the opportunity to help influence policy, not just react to incidents.
During the 1914–1918 war, Lee served as publicity director and later as Assistant to the Chairman of
the American Red Cross (Lee Papers, 1997).

4.2. Elliot

Elliot was the son of RD Blumenfield, who was editor of the Daily Express from 1902 to 1933. Elliot
was educated at Marlborough and was about to go up to Oxford in 1914 when the war started. Instead
he attended Sandhurst, was commissioned into the 3rd Hussars and went to fight in France. After the
War, he could not afford to support himself in a smart cavalry regiment at a minimum cost of £500 a
year so he too went into journalism. He spent a year working as a reporter on the New York Mail. During
this time, according to Elliot’s recollections, ‘When . . . we wanted any information about the subway
[Underground] we went to a man called I. V. Lee [sic] who called himself Public Relations Officer’. Elliot
returned to England, worked on the London Evening Standard for a further year, and in 1925 he was
taken on by the Southern Railway, having suggested at his interview ‘Why not call me Public Relations
Officer?’ (Elliot, 1982, p. 19). He was then taken ‘down’ to see the Chairman of the Southern, General
Baring, who had been in the 10th Hussars. By this time Elliot had changed his name from Blumenfield on
Beaverbrook’s advice: ‘John, you would be wise to give up your German name. We shall have another war
with Germany in your lifetime . . . Follow the King’s example’. Elliot did, taking his second forename
as his new surname (Elliot, 1982, p. 15).
 S. Harrison, K. Moloney / Public Relations Review 30 (2004) 205–215 209

Following a successful year’s trial, Elliot was given a permanent post in 1926. He too rose up through
the ranks of management in the railway company, with increasing influence over policy. He stayed in
railways all his working life, reaching controlling positions in the industry’s dominant coalition. He
became General Manager of the Southern Railway in 1947, followed by positions as Chairman of the
newly nationalised railways’ Executive and Chairman of London Transport in 1953.

5. The railway companies

As we have seen, both Lee and Elliot worked for railway companies at a time when such companies
were not regarded in high public esteem. Both were employed to turn round the reputation of their
employers. We could at this point review the American and UK railway industries over the last century
and mischievously suggest that some PR challenges are permanent, and perhaps insurmountable. Instead,
we will admire Lee and Elliot for professional tenacity.

5.1. Lee

Lee was working for the Pennsylvania Railroad when an accident happened near Gap, Pennsylvania.
He immediately invited reporters to come to the scene and provided facilities for them at the accident site.
In spite of opposition from the company management, he provided reporters with factual information and
answered all their questions. Reporters did not get such assistance when another train wreck occurred
at about the same time on the neighbouring New York Central Railroad. The New York Central stuck
to its policy of saying nothing and avoiding the press: the press was infuriated by this attitude, having
had their jobs made easier, with Lee’s help, at the Pennsylvania wreck. ‘Columns and editorials poured
forth chastising the Central and praising the Pennsylvania. Lee’s efforts resulted in positive publicity,
increased credibility, comparative advantages over the Central, and good, constructive press coverage
and relations.’ (Aronoff, 1997, p. 50). Some sixty years after the event Newsom wrote: ‘This whole
activity of which you and I are a part can probably be said to have its beginning when Ivy Lee persuaded
the directors of the Pennsylvania Railroad that the press should be given all the facts on all railway
accidents—even though the facts might place the blame on the railroad itself’ (Newsom, 1963, p. 4).
Lee was establishing the access principle for reporters and initiating best practice in modern media
management.

5.2. Elliot

The Southern Railway in the 1920s faced what would be called today an issues management problem
of customer relations, one which was reducing its corporate reputation. It was the largest commuter
rail network in the country and carried half of the UK’s daily traffic of that sort. It used steam trains
for these services but steam was a relatively costly, staff-intensive, slow and unreliable form of traction
for suburban and semi-long distance travel. More effective were electric trains and the Southern was
converting its network line-by-line, with stations and rolling stock also being up-dated, in a £25m ($36m)
capital investment.
But this modernisation programme caused disruption. Passengers were in the dark about it: there
had been no advance, public information campaign; the Southern was being criticised in the press. Sir
210 S. Harrison, K. Moloney / Public Relations Review 30 (2004) 205–215

Herbert Walker, the Southern’s general manager, called this ‘a dent in [our] armour’ and noted that
London Transport, operator of the London Underground system, was receiving less press criticism than
his railway (Allen & Robson, 1981, pp. 191–192). He told Lord Ashfield, chairman of London Transport:
‘You manage to get away with murder on the Tubes [Underground]’. Ashfield replied; ‘Well, I understand
that you have no press office, so reporters can pick up any kind of story, and listen to all kinds of nonsense.
You have got to reverse all this, and open up, and tell the world about your electrification’. He added
that he know a young man—Elliot—who could help. Elliot went on to open up a press office at Waterloo
station and thus gave the example in 1926 of a pro-active media strategy to the fledgling UK public
relations industry.

6. Declarations of principles

6.1. Lee

One of Lee’s early clients was the coal mining company George F Baer & Associates, who hired him
at the height of a period of labour unrest in the anthracite mines. In contrast to the openness and indeed
courting of the press by the leader of the labour forces, Baer remained tight lipped. In consequence the
newspapers, and the newspaper-reading public, had more sympathy with the strikers than with the mine
owners. Lee persuaded Baer that it was in the company’s interests to open up and promptly issued a
‘Declaration of Principles’ to all newspaper city editors. It read:
‘This is not a secret press bureau. All our work is done in the open. We aim to supply news. This is not
an advertising agency; if you think any of our matter ought properly to go to your business office, do
not use it. Our matter is accurate. Further details on any subject treated will be supplied promptly and
any editor will be assisted most cheerfully in verifying directly any statement of fact.

. . . In brief, our plan is, frankly and openly, on behalf of business concerns and public institutions,
to supply to the press and public of the United States prompt and accurate information concerning
subjects which it is of value and interest to the public to know about.’ (Morse, 1906, p. 460)

6.2. Elliot

One of Elliot’s priorities as its new Public Relations Officer was to gain the confidence of his colleagues,
who were not familiar with the idea of media relations. For his part, he set about briefing himself on
electrification from his new colleagues before holding a press open day at Waterloo station (Elliot,
1982, p. 20). The press were addressed by the general manager and then Elliot opened the Southern
Railway’s first press office at the station. He opened it with a declaration similar to the one Lee had
made in 1906 when he represented an unpopular organisation and faced a hostile political and media
world.
Elliot voiced his operating principles rather than proclaiming them in a document sent to news desks:
“I will never tell you a lie; if we are in difficulties I will always tell you what the truth is and, if we
trust each other, that will be alright. Otherwise if you start inventing things, I will not see you, nor look
after you again.” (Allen & Robson, 1981, pp. 187–200)
 S. Harrison, K. Moloney / Public Relations Review 30 (2004) 205–215 211

‘Front page stories and pictures’ about electrification appeared in the newspapers the next day. And he
‘gradually began to build up goodwill, particularly with evening papers’. He paid ‘special’ attention to
newspapers serving the South London suburbs, through which the Southern Railway ran, and ‘. . . took
care to see that they had a stream of stories about our plans for modernisation’. (Elliot, 1982, p. 20).

7. Accuracy and truth

It is interesting to look more closely at the declarations published by Lee and Elliot. Lee speaks of
providing ‘accurate information’ while Elliot is apparently more positive: ‘I will never tell you a lie’.
Olasky (1987, p. 51) notes that while Lee’s Declaration may have proved factually correct he was, in
fact, ‘adept at creating dishonest impressions from factual statements . . . . Lee’s declaration created an
inaccurate impression of a willingness to lay his cards on the table . . . . He continued to abide by the
letter of his accuracy law, but not the spirit of truth telling’. Elliot, however, has not been associated in the
UK public relations literature with minimal ‘truth’ or ‘accuracy’ statements: but his career has not been
subject to the forensic intensity of Lee’s. Without evidence and with the assumption of thinking well of
PR people until finding otherwise, we suggest that Elliot’s practice was other than Lee’s.
‘Telling the truth’ in the practice of public relations has been discussed elsewhere (see, for example Seib
& Fitzpatrick, 1995, pp. 55–66). If Olasky is correct about Lee, the comment connects with contemporary
concern about ‘spin’. If our tentative judgement about Elliot is correct, there is disconnection. ‘Truth’ and
‘accuracy’ issues are always close to any discussion about public relations for they influence the quality
of public debate in a democracy. How those qualities have been handled by professionals in the past and
between cultures is significant research waiting to be done.
The Public Relations Society of America and the UK Institute of Public Relations refer in their codes of
practice to the requirement to ‘adhere to truth and accuracy (PRSA Article 3) and to ‘have a positive duty
at all times to respect the truth and shall not disseminate false or misleading information knowingly or
recklessly’ (IPR Paragraph 2.2). These bodies were founded in 1948, however, years after Lee and Elliot
published their declarations. It was evidently thought necessary by the founders of these professional
bodies to iterate very clearly that truth and accuracy were requirements of professional public relations
practice.

8. Strategy

8.1. Lee

Lee wrote extensively on public relations strategy (see, for example Lee, 1915, 1917a, 1917b, 1920,
1921, 1925, 1927a, 1934) and between 1910 and 1915 gave seventy addresses on the subject to audiences
all over America and in London. Some of the principles he adhered to were: tell the truth; trust the judge-
ment of the public; don’t deal in abstractions; stand by your policies and beliefs. He used a three-pronged
strategy based on these principles to change the image of aviation in the 1920s, at the time when Elliot was
beginning his work for the railways. The three elements were: humanizing the issue of aviation safety;
influencing opinion leaders; and providing concrete examples. These elements are considered in further
detail below.
212 S. Harrison, K. Moloney / Public Relations Review 30 (2004) 205–215

8.2. Elliot

Looking at the whole of his career, it is remarkable how many of the elements of modern PR strat-
egy he assembled into his work between 1925 and 1939 when the start of the Second World War
gave ‘PR’ and ‘strategy’ completely different meanings. Reading Allen and Robson (1981) and Elliot
(1960, 1982) we see a multi-media approach to message distribution (press, posters, corporate adver-
tising, customer relations magazine); corporate branding (named steam locomotives and trains, com-
mercial art for travel destinations, station design and ship interior design); marketing PR to promote
sales to repay the electrification capital project; managing the issue of deregulating railway charges
so as to better compete against road freight and car travel, and hiring a lobbyist to work Parliament
and the media. He started this integrated PR strategy when the Southern Railway’s reputation was
very low with its commuting customers because of poor service; insisted at interview on direct re-
porting to the company’s dominant coalition (the general manager, Sir Herbert Walker); became
general manger of the Southern in 1947, and went to head the nationalised British Railways
1951–1953.

9. Humanizing

Fundamental to Lee’s practice of public relations was the belief that while individuals could be swayed
by logical argument, the general public needed to have issues ‘humanized’ before they would take an
interest. Thus, he began his campaign on aviation by setting up tours by two of the most dashing aviators
of the day—Richard Byrd in his polar plane and Charles Lindbergh in his Spirit of St Louis. Thousands
of people came out to see them during the parades Lee organised in the towns they visited (Lee Papers,
1997, Box 73).

9.1. Elliot

Elliot also used attractive natural and homely images to popularise the railway. He used posters of
water colours of idyllic views from south east counties through which Southern Electric operated.
For longer journeys beyond the London suburbs, the Southern operated stream trains and one poster
for these services became a classic. It shows a little boy, beside a towering engine, looking up at
the smiling driver, and captioned “For Holidays I always go SOUTHERN ‘cos it’s the sunshine
line!”

10. Influencing opinion leaders

10.1. Lee

He could see the importance of opinion leaders in disseminating a message. In addition to the lever-
age offered by having leaders tell the message for you, Lee saw that causes require champions, and
that ‘the crowd craves leadership’ (Lee, 1917a, 1917b, p. 182). He aimed to influence newspaper
editors, for example persuading Associated Press to establish an aviation department in 1928 (Lee
 S. Harrison, K. Moloney / Public Relations Review 30 (2004) 205–215 213

Papers, 1997, Box 74); business leaders—corporations and chambers of commerce; members
of the government; the armed services and educators. He reached them through speeches,
radio broadcasts, special events and conferences, as well as through his own personal connec-
tions.

10.2. Elliot

Historians of Britain’s railways, Simmons & Biddle have described Elliot as ‘a fluent and skil-
ful manager’ (1999, p. 145). He rose to the top of his own company, and then on to the top of his
industry. He knew how to influence the powerful in his own interest. The Labour Prime Minister
Clement Attle asked him ‘Are you willing to work as hard and as well in this job for the Nation,
as you were for the shareholders of the Southern Railway?’ (Simmons & Biddle, 1999, p. 194). El-
liot retired as Sir John. He knew how to influence the powerful in the railway companies’ interests
as well. He was a member of a successful lobby of Parliament by the industry’s interest group in
1937 to set rates freely, a policy stopped in its tracks by the onset of war in 1939 (Elliot, 1982,
pp. 46–47).

11. Providing concrete examples

11.1. Lee

‘A public to be influenced must feel . . . To make the public feel, we must be concrete’ wrote Lee in
1915 in a pamphlet on human nature and the railroads (Lee, 1915, p. 17). In the 1920s, when Lee was
working for the Guggenheim Foundation for the Promotion of Aviation, he came up with three concrete
examples to show that air travel was safe. These were the Western Air Express Tour, the Safe Aircraft
Competition and the ‘Flying in Fog’ experiment.
Recognising that ‘the public will very rightly give its support to commercial flying only after repeated
evidence of performance and safety’ (Lee, 1927b), he organised a 40-city tour by three aeroplanes,
each carrying two pilots to ensure that ‘either one of whom will at all times have complete control of
the machine . . . each plane is equipped with three engines, so that even with the breakdown of two of
them, the plane should still be able to make a safe landing’. The Safe Aircraft Competition attracted 27
entrants from manufacturers in Britain and Europe as well as the USA, who demonstrated their ability
to fly a looping course over a number of obstacles, such as trees. The Flying in Fog experiment was
conducted with the co-operation of the Army Air Corps, who seconded Lt. James H Doolittle as Director
of Operations. The first successful flight of a plane through ‘simulated dense fog’—in fact, with the
pilot flying in a cockpit which had been blacked out so that visibility was effectively zero, took place in
September 1929, when Doolittle took off, flew a specific course, and landed safely ‘without reference to
the earth’ (Gibbs-Smith, 1970, p. 192).

11.2. Elliot

Elliot understood that the Southern’s public relations had to tell a ‘story’ of progress about its capital
programme of electrification, and of value-for-money travel offers. ‘I realised early on that publicity itself
214 S. Harrison, K. Moloney / Public Relations Review 30 (2004) 205–215

would be worse than useless unless the railway services were seen to be progressively improving. We
had to tell the travelling public by every known and accepted method about the Southern’s future plans,
and also to encourage all concerned with management and operation to keep them up-to-date on progress
and forthcoming improvements’ (Elliot, 1982, p. 22).
He spent £10,000 on corporate advertising in evening and morning papers for a public information
campaign ‘The Truth about the Southern’ and used station posters with the headline ‘Does your wife
know?’ to sell half-price, non peak-time fares.

12. Lee and Elliot: a retrospective view

Today’s practitioner recognises as modern the nature of the work challenges and responses facing these
early professionals.
Lee’s operational techniques included media relations; multi-media communications; indirect promo-
tion; marketing, corporate identity and branding, and lobbying. He gave instructions on the appearance
of press releases which stand the test of time:

‘And right here let it be urged that every statement from a public service corporation should be author-
itative, issued preferably on stationery bearing the name of the company and the name of the president.
Every newspaper, in fact every person reading such a statement, should know whence it comes and
who stands sponsor for it.’ (Lee, 1917a, 1917b, p. 5)

In Elliot’s case professional continuity is apparent in three ways. First, there is a realization that
work content over time is constant. We have seen the UK’s first named PRO deal with discontented
customers; a critical press; a modernisation programme causing disruption to services; the need for new
products; raising service standards; shifting internal attitudes; and with encroaching competition from new
technology, and the need for supportive legislation. Second, his operational techniques are familiar to the
modern professional—media relations; multi media communications using print publicity, and corporate
advertising; indirect promotion of a service using destinations; marketing PR; corporate identity/branding,
and lobbying. Third, Elliot’s work culture is also identifiable to the modern professional: sensitivity over
job titles; reporting lines to the CEO; working in a production-orientated organisation; gaining credibility
with colleagues, and hiring in specialists.
These similarities between the two careers and the two countries indicate a shared continuous work
experience of public relations in the USA going back to the early 1900s, and in the UK to the 1920s.
To appreciate this continuity is to know that modern professionals have predecessors who thought and
operated like them, even though the work vocabulary was different or under-developed. This timeline
allows us to think of public relations people, past and present, as a community of professionals. Perhaps
this view is to invest the doing of public relations with historical imagination: the creative capacity of
contemporaries to see work by predecessors as a guide for work today. Is that a useful resource? Raucher
(1968, p. ix), in his history of American PR, may have answered ‘yes’ for he wrote that ‘The study of
public relations . . . must be both a history of ideas and a history of actual practices, an examination of
the interrelationship between ideas and action’.
Can the timeline reaching back one hundred years transmit to us today more insight about our public
relations?
 S. Harrison, K. Moloney / Public Relations Review 30 (2004) 205–215 215

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