Content note: Quotes wartime anti-German language, including "Hun", and period terms for racial and national groups. This object is shown as it was published. Why
This division enlisted the volunteer services of the leading novelists, essayists and short-story writers of America. Some 50 men and women writers, and as many college presidents and professors, constituted a virtual staff that worked faithfully week after week. Among the number were Samuel Hopkins Adams, Ellis Parker Butler, Booth Tarkington, Meredith Nicholson, Harvey O'Higgins, Herbert Quick, John Spargo, William English Walling, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Wallace Irwin, Richard Washburn Child, Samuel Merwin, Roland G. Usher, Ralph D. Paine, Martha Bensley Bruere, Edward Mott Wooley, John Reed Scott, Prof. John Erskine, Prof. Eugene Davenport, Crittenden Marriott, James Collins, Rex Beach, Virginia Frazer Boyle, and many others.
At first a good many personal pronouncements were used to make clear why we are at war, to explain the ideals for which we are fighting. Opinions of prominent people were in demand, though stories of our war activities were also used. But the character of the matter sent out changed as the war progressed. Our object was, in the newspaper phrase, to " sell the war," and we tried to furnish, dressed in acceptable newspaper style, the story of the war machine in its thousands of phases, the story of our boys over there and over here, and the spirit that is back of the whole great adventure.
The Division of Syndicate Features did not confine itself wholly to fact stories and human interest stuff about army and navy workers. It dealt also with the larger aspects that were behind the immediate facts. It covered the racial, the social, the moral, and the financial aspects of the war, written by specialists in these lines.
The stories were used from Florida to Alaska, from New York to California, reaching a circulation of about 12,000,000 a month. Assuming that each paper was read by two people, it meant that one-fourth of the people in this country had access to our syndicate stories.
We established also a semimonthly service for trade journals, labor papers, and house organs.
The success of the division owed much to the brilliant direction of "William MacLeod Raine, who was assisted by Mr. Arthur MacFarlane.
Complete Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information, George Creel, Chairman, Committee on Public Information. A work of the United States government, printed by the Government Printing Office in 1920, so not protected by copyright in the United States (17 U.S.C. 105) and in the public domain by age as well. The Library of Congress states that it is unaware of any copyright restrictions on the item. Provenance and rights.