Modern public relations industry was created as a response to basically creeping democracy.

More and more people were wanting in on this freedom thing, and it made the country's

titans of industry nervous. You had the muck-raakers, journalists like Uptans and Claire,

Aida Tarbal, and Aida B Wells, writing about the dark side of the American dream, exposing

the robber barons who ran the coal oil and railroad industries, calling for fair treatment

of workers and factories, and shining a light on systemic and often violent discrimination.

And you had various groups fighting to expand the vote, to people who weren't white, male,

or rich. Ivy Lee and Edward Bernese emerged in the midst of this, and put their propaganda

skills to work helping the powerful stay right where they were.

I mean, what's interesting is that the exact same kind of thing occurred in the 1960s,

when corporations started again being held responsible for their environmental health

and safety records by the new social movements that come out of the 60s, the civil rights movement,

the consumer movement, and the environmental movement.

That's Brown University environmental sociologist Bob Brull. He's the first person who told

me about the focus of our episode today, a guy by the name of E. Bruce Harrison.

Into this breach steps, E. Bruce Harrison, to develop noir social technologies, to be

able to equip corporations, to be able to address this new challenge to their image.

And so there's a great deal of parallel between the muck-breakers in the progressive era,

and the environmental movement and the new social movements that come out of the 1960s,

and how industry got at first caught flat-footed.

One of the many interesting things about Harrison is the fact that his wife, Patricia, was

very much his partner in crime. The Harrison's ran a PR firm together from 1973 to 1996.

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