Excerpt from An Introduction to Public Opinion His volume is the outgrowth of a series of lectures constituting Ta part of a two weeks' course on public relations organized by the American Council on Public Relations and presented to groups of business men at Reed College, Portland, Oregon; Stanford Uni versity; and the University of Washington in Seattle, during the summer of 1939. They were also included in the short course offered by the Council in Milwaukee in February, 1940. Public-relations problems are essentially public-opinion problems. Moreover, the academic student of public opinion soon discovers that those most realistically concerned with his field of study are men and women seeking to solve public-relations problems. Starting with the practical problems of public relations I have tried to show how a knowledge of public opinion will aid in their solution and what an understanding of public opinion involves. The purpose of these lectures is twofold: (i) to present a theory of public opinion which will serve as a frame of reference for public Officials, political leaders, business executives, labor leaders, and group leaders generally who are today at grips with public - relations prob lems; (2) to clarify the meaning of such terms as public relations, public opinion, public interest, and propaganda, and to appraise the role of certain institutions and practices in the public-opinion arena. Special attention is given to public - opinion polls, public-opinion re search, current attempts to analyze propaganda, and the impact of foreign propaganda on the American scene. Some suggestions are offered for improving the functioning of public opinion in a democracy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.