26 REPORT OP THE FORESTRY COMMITTEE 



and we'll preach it." The new way works more like this: "Do you want to 

 make more money as well as do your duty? Then stop the other fellow from 

 destroying dollars you would otherwise share. We have a bargain-price msur- 

 ance policy that you can't afford to be without. Look over our prospectus and 

 invest." 



Now forest preservation is insurance and insurance is good business. We 

 are offering the public a commodity that must be paid for in money and careful 

 conduct, and we must convince the public that it is worth the price. We must 

 arrest attention, which is being sought by plenty of competitors. We must hold 

 interest when we get it and make good with our argument. All of this involves 

 a knowledge of exactly the same elements of human nature, of the same principles 

 of psychological appeal, that must be the foundation of every successful contest 

 against the inertia of humanity, from the wiles of the side-show barker to the 

 trained persuasiveness of the insurance agent and the publicity devices of the 

 modern advertising genius. We may reach the thoughtful minority by calm logic 

 or appeal to public spirit, but it is the thoughtless majority that we are really 

 after. What we say to these must be not only what "he who runs may read," 

 but what he will read, will remember, and will act upon. 



The average man does not want mere logic. But if you can stop him a 

 moment, and photograph an idea upon his mind in spite of him, you not only 

 have the idea there where he cannot get away from it, but he is favorably disposed 

 toward the idea itself. For in his mind is also a feeling that it was probably his 

 idea all the time, else he couldn't have responded so quickly — a. feeling you don't 

 get when you have to hold a man a prisoner in a corner until you force him to 

 admit rather unwillingly the correctness of ybur argument. 



This is not a plea against dignified, scholarly appeal to reason, nor against 

 appeal to high motives of citizenship and responsibihty. It is merely the plea 

 that to get a large proportion of our population interested in forest affairs we 

 should adopt methods that experience has proved most effectual in getting its 

 interest in anything else. It is to modern business and political campaigning 

 that we must look for the last word in the psychology of appeal to himian 

 ignorance and indifference. Apply the methods that experts in these lines employ, 

 improving them if you can, and you are probably putting the hardest possible 

 punch behind forest propaganda. 



Then if our first premise is true— that public interest and understanding are 

 essential to satisfactory forestry progress— it follows that technical training and 

 ability in publicity is a necessary part of the equipment of forest workers. What 

 does it avail you to devise a perfect forest law if you have not the knowledge of 

 legislative manipulation to get it passed? Are even perfect fire-fighting organi- 

 zation and methods as valuable as reducing the number of fires to find and fight? 

 Why learn how to manage forests properly unless you can convince owner and 

 public that it pays? Why be a public forest official when you cannot tease 

 enough funds out of the community to do satisfactory work? Why take four 

 years out of a boy's life to fit him for a forestry job and teach nothing to. help 

 him create a demand for his services? Why devote a forestry convention to 



