Page 99 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Information Revolutions
National Woman’s Party used radio to broadcast messages in support
of women’s rights. 133 Labor unions also used radio early on, sponsoring
radio programs and purchasing advertising well before 1930. 134 The CIO
in particular used radio aggressively as an organizing tool in the 1930s,
despite eventual denial of access by NBC and CBS, even using radio to
organize strikes and other labor actions. 135 The Anti-Saloon League dis-
tributedmessagesusingradioaswellasfilminthe1920s,andfarmers’or-
ganizationsdidthesame. 136 TheNationalGrange,forexample,broadcast
an hour-long program on its annual conventions from 1922 to 1942. 137
The same 1930–31 list of NBC clients including Tammany Hall and the
Republican Party also includes what would now be called interest groups:
the Citizens Anti-Charter League and the Tax Payers Committee. 138
During a Federal Trade Commission investigation in the late 1920s and
early 1930s into whether a trust existed in the power utility industry, util-
ityfirmsandgroupsusedradioextensivelyinanefforttobuildpublicsup-
port.AmongthemostimportantusersofradioweretheEdisonCompany
of Boston and the National Industrial Conservation Board, a utility com-
pany advocacy group. 139 The NAACP took a wary stance toward radio
because of its typically denigrating portrayals of African-Americans, but
did run a few membership recruitment ads as early as 1948. 140
One of the most interesting cases of interest group broadcasting in-
volves the American Medical Association. The AMA used radio exten-
sively in the 1930s in the form of public health broadcasting on subjects
such as cancer, tuberculosis, and children’s growth. By the late 1930s
and ’40s, its broadcasts became explicitly political as the group opposed
proposals for national health insurance. In 1946, for example, it hired a
public relations firm to mount a “National Education Campaign” timed
to influence the congressional elections. It spent over $1 million in that

133 Susan D. Becker, The Origins of the Equal Rights Amendment: American Feminism
between the Wars (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981).
134 Ross Evans Paulson, Liberty, Equality and Justice: Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and
the Regulation of Business, 1865–1932 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997);
Nathan Godfried, “The Origins of Labor Radio: WCFL, the ‘Voice of Labor,’ 1925–
1928,”Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 7, no. 2 (1987): 143–59.
135 Godfried, “The Origins of Labor Radio.”
136 K. Austin Kerr, Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985).
137 Bruce E. Field, Harvest of Dissent (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998).
138 Arnold, Broadcast Advertising.
139
Carl D. Thompson, Confessions of the Power Trust (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1932).
140
Leonard Archer, Black Images in the American Theatre (Brooklyn: Pageant-Poseidon,
1973).
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