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

Early life and education

Creel was born on December 1, 1876, in Blackburn, Missouri, to Henry Clay Creel and Virginia Fackler Creel, who had three sons, Wylie, George, and Richard Henry (Hal). His father came to Missouri from Parkersburg, Virginia, and bought land in Osage County, Missouri; he was college educated, and served in Virginia legislature. A captain of the Confederate States Army during the Civil War, he did not succeed in the Missouri post-war economy as a farmer and rancher and became an alcoholic. Virginia provided for the family by keeping a boarding house in Kansas City and by sewing and keeping a large garden in Odessa, Missouri. All her children became productive members of society: Wylie Creel, a businessman; George, a journalist and writer; and Richard, a doctor, who served as Assistant Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service.

His alcoholic father did not leave as deep an impression on Creel as did his mother, who inspired his passion for women's suffrage. The family moved frequently around west-central Missouri in Creel's early years, living for a time in Wheatland, Hickory County, Missouri, then Kansas City before finally settling in Odessa, Missouri, in 1888. He often said that, "I knew my mother had more character, brains, and competence than any man that ever lived." His mother also encouraged his love for literature. Although Creel did not receive much formal education, as his mother pulled him out of school system, and was mainly home-schooled, he credited his mother for his fair knowledge of history and literature including classics, such as the Iliad.

Career

Early career

In 1896, he began his first formal job at the Kansas City World. as well as a campaign to destroy the red-light district in downtown Denver, while providing a tax-funded rehabilitation farm for women leaving prostitution. His time as police commissioner ended after he began pushing the Mayor Henry Arnold to live up to campaign promises. Although he was dismissed by the mayor for the creation of dissension, he was lauded nationally for his watchdog efforts. George Creel was named the head of the committee, and he created 37 distinct divisions, most notably the Division of Pictorial Publicity, the Four Minute Men Division, the News Division, and the Censorship Board. Creel himself said that the images were "something that caught even the most indifferent eye." These civilian volunteers spoke at social events in places like movie theaters and fellowship halls for four minutes, which was the time it took to change a movie reel and the time believed to be a human's attention span. The guidelines set forth by Creel directed the volunteers to fill their speeches with facts and appeals to emotions to bolster public support for the war efforts. Many of the 20th century's most influential public relations practitioners were trained under Creel on the committee, including Edward Bernays and Carl R. Byoir.

Trask continues:

:As an administrator Creel was extraordinarily energetic, quick to make decisions, often impulsive. He was capable of inspiring strong devotion....Wilson seems to have held Creel in high regard, probably because of his unbending personal loyalty to the president as well as his effective methods of purveying administrative dogma.

Post-war career

thumb|right|Creel in 1934

After his prolific career as the chairman of the CPI, Creel joined Collier's magazine as a feature writer, until he retired in the late 1940s. The couple had two children, a son named George Jr. and a daughter named Frances. In 1943, he married Alice May Rosseter. During the last years of his life Creel resided in San Francisco until he died on October 2, 1953, at age 76.

Works

Creel was the author of an extensive collection of writings. Some of his writing and books include:

Articles

  • "Rockefeller Law." The Masses, vol. 6, no. 10, iss. 50 (Jul. 1916), pp. 5–6. Full issue.
  • "The Fight for Public Opinion." Scientific American, vol. 118, no. 14 (Apr. 6, 1918), p. 298. . Full issue.

Books

  • Quatrains of Christ. Preface by Julian Hawthorne. Kansas City: The Independent Press (1907). .
  • Children in Bondage, with Edwin Markham & B. B. Lindsey (1913).
  • Wilson and the Issues (1916).
  • Ireland's Fight for Freedom (1919).
  • How We Advertised America (1920).
  • The War, the World and Wilson (1920).
  • Uncle Henry (1923).
  • The People Next Door: An Interpretive History of Mexico and the Mexicans. New York: John Day Company (1926).
  • Sons of the Eagle: Soaring Figures of America's Past. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company (1927).
  • Sam Houston: Colossus in Buckskin (1928). .
  • Tom Paine Liberty Bell. New York: Sears Pub. Co. (1932). .
  • War Criminals and Punishment (1944). .
  • Rebel at Large: Recollections of Fifty Crowded Years. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons (1947). .
  • Russia's Race for Asia. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill (1949). .

References

Notes

Further reading

Articles

  • Benson, Krystina (2010). "Archival Analysis of The Committee on Public Information: The Relationship between Propaganda, Journalism and Popular Culture." International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society, vol. 6, no. 4. pp. 151–164. abstract
  • Broom, John T. "Creel, George." In: 1914-1918-online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  • Cornwell Jr, Elmer E. (1959). "Wilson, Creel, and the Presidency." Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 2. pp. 189–202. .
  • Doenecke, Justus D. (Feb. 2000) "Creel, George Edward." American National Biography Online.
  • Fishman, Donald (2001). "George Creel: Freedom of Speech, the Film Industry, and Censorship During World War I." Free Speech Yearbook, vol. 39, no. 1. pp. 34–56.
  • Goldman, Emma (Feb. 2013). "Observations and Comments." Mother Earth, vol. VII, no. 12. primary source
  • Larson, Cedric, and James R. Mock (1939). "The Lost Files of the Creel Committee of 1917-19." Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 1. pp. 5–29. .
  • Mastrangelo, Lisa (Apr. 4, 2009). "World War I, Public Intellectuals, and the Four Minute Men: Convergent Ideals of Public Speaking and Civic Participation." Rhetoric and Public Affairs.
  • Maxwell, Chloe (Spring 2015). "George Creel and the Committee on Public Information, 1917–1918." Tenor of Our Times, vol. 4, no. 1, article 8.
  • Murphy, Dennis M., and James F. White (2007). "Propaganda: Can a Word Decide a War?" Army War College.
  • Schaack, Eric Van (2006). "The Division of Pictorial Publicity in World War I." Design Issues, vol. 22, no. 1. pp. 32–45.
  • Vogt, George L. (2000). "When Posters Went to War: How America's Best Commercial Artists Helped Win World War I." Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 84, no. 2. pp. 38–47. .

Books

  • Ashley, Perry J. (1984). American Newspaper Journalists, 1901–1925. Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 25. Detroit: Gale Research. .
  • Axlerod, Alan (2009). Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. .
  • Blum, Daniel (1954). Great Stars of the American Stage, Profile #34, 2nd edition.
  • Committee on Public Information (1917). How the War Came to America. Washington: Government Printing Office. primary source.
  • Creel, George (1920). How We Advertised America: The First Telling of the Amazing Story of the Committee on Public Information That Carried the Gospel of Americanism to Every Corner of the Globe. New York: Harper & Brothers. . .
  • Fleming, Thomas (2003) The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I. New York: Basic Books.
  • Hamilton, John Maxwell (2020). Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda. Baton Rouge: LSU Press. .
  • Vaughn, Steven (1980). Holding Fast the Inner Lines: Democracy, Nationalism, and the Committee on Public Information. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
  • Wilcox, Dennis L., and Glen T. Cameron, Jae-Hwa Shinn, Bryan H. Reber (2013). Think: Public Relations. New Jersey: Pearson Education; Boston: Allyn & Bacon. .
  • "Mobilizing Movies! The U.S. Signal Corps Goes To War, 1917-1919", a 2017 documentary on film propaganda in World War I.
  • George Creel at The Online Books Page
  • Works by George Creel at Internet Archive
  • "Democrats back Upton Sinclair for Governor--outtakes." Fox Movietone News Story 23-308, September 20, 1934.