Counsel

As the mongoose loathes the cobra, as the herring fears the shark, as the flapper dodges "lectures," so do editors shun the machinations of a species whose villainy is (to editors) as plain as the nose on your face and as hard to clap your eyes on. This species was for a long time called "press agent." His "hoy," "bunk" and "bull" stories, his hoaxes, false fronts and fabrications were easily detected and. cast out when he was in his professional nonage. Then he became a "publicity agent" and a "moulder of favorable public opinion." If there is anything an editor hates to do it is to give something for nothing, that is, empty space for heavy camouflage that should (he feels) be paid for at advertising rates. Publishers' trade sheets fuss and fume with "exposes" of "moulders" and "agents" specially dangerous to the publishing weal.

Next there evolved the "public relations counsel," of whose subtly modified functions editors and publishers have professed themselves hopefully ignorant.

Lately, Public Relations Counsellor Edward L. Bernays* of Manhattan made a definition which Editor and Publisher hastened to reprint with the grateful title, "Now We Know." Mr. Bernays declared: "The public relations counsel carries forward to a logical development, along broader and more constructive lines, the work of the 'publicity man'."

* Nephew of Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.