Promoting Monopoly

Karen Miller Russell (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Jim Kennedy Professor of New Media and Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia. She is the author of The Voice of Business: Hill & Knowlton and Postwar Public Relations.

“This is the book on AT&T’s public relations that needed to be written. We knew AT&T was an early adopter of public relations. We knew the names of Vail, Ellsworth, Page, but little else. Karen Miller Russell fleshes out the story in a thoroughly researched and engagingly written book that provides a glimpse into the thinking of these and other men involved in promoting the idea that an AT&T monopoly was in the best interest of the American public.”—Karla K. Gower, Director, Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations, The University of Alabama

• List of Illustrations – Preface – Acknowledgements – "A Necessary Adjunct to Nearly All Commercial Enterprises": The Rise of Corporate Publicity in the United States – "To Undertake Something in the Missionary Line": William A. Hovey and Corporate Publicity at American Bell, 1876–1903 – "A Largely Random Basis": AT&T, Competition, and the Publicity Bureau, 1903–1907 – "One Policy, One System, Universal Service": Educating the Public, 1908–1913 – "We Are Really Governed by Publicity": Institutionalizing Public Relations, 1913–1926 – "To Serve Well We Must Earn Well": AT&T’s Financial Policy and the Great Depression, 1927–1934 – "All Business in a Democratic Country … Exists by Public Approval": The FCC Investigation, 1935–1941 – Conclusion "The Number One Public Relations Post in Industry": AT&T in U.S. Public Relations History – Index.