Public event

“ The occupations, engagements, and amusements of the higher classes of society had long required a record; they found it in the Court Journal. The fête champêtre, the sumptuous banquet, the concert, the soirée, the ball, the public and private habits of royal and noble life, those habits which give the tone to manners throughout the empire, were depicted with a freshness and accuracy hitherto unattempted ”

“ Round the news-shops—whence poured a very flood of papers and pamphlets—in the cafés and public places, crowds of men formed and dispersed and formed again, who all at once flashed into lightning-like action at the cry "To arms, to arms!" ”

“ During the recess numerous volunteers meet in various parts of the country, write in public journals, interchange their ideas, explode many crotchets, find some that will stand the wear and tear of discussion, prepare, on all tenable views of a question, that mysterious and spiritual, but very real, power called Public Opinion, and so clear the field for action. ”

“ In reporting conventions of milliners, tailors, jewelers, and the like, one can always find excellent features in the incoming styles. The public is greedy for stories of advance styles. In political picnics the feature is practically always the speeches, though sometimes there are athletic contests that provide good copy and may be presented in accordance with Part III, Chapter XVI. In holiday celebrations also the feature may be speeches or athletic contests, or else parades of floats, fraternal orders, soldiers, etc. ”

“ Public attention was aroused—meetings began to be numerously called—knowledge was multiplied—petitions poured in, and the Government found itself under a necessity of paying attention to the noble public sentiment which was rapidly forming against the long cherished iniquity of the nation. ”

“ The fact is, our fair becoming one of the most popular and genteel exhibitions of the year. We are glad of its prosperity, not because we love popularity, but because of the change in public opinion which it indicates. We know that imputations have been cast upon those who act most prominently in conducting this fair. ”

“ The close watching of the course of opinion has become to-day the principal preoccupation of the press and of governments. The effect produced by an event, a legislative proposal, a speech, is without intermission what they require to know, and the task is not easy, for nothing is more mobile and changeable than the thought of crowds, and nothing more frequent than to see them execrate to-day what they applauded yesterday. ”

“ Those who stayed behind drew up a series of regulations that made any change a subject for universal discussion, and as the regulations were being continually altered, public gatherings took up most of the day's work. ”

“ In the absence of that immense variety of popular entertainments which now feed the public taste and appetite, the people found their chief amusement in frequenting the courts and public and political assemblies. ”

“ Are there no public meetings held amongst us for the purposes of political change, social improvement, religious extension, moral amelioration, charity, or festivity, in which large numbers of the people, and often of all ranks and both sexes, are brought together, in which there is ample room for the display of all the graces of oratory, and in which the most eloquent and impassioned speaker is sure to carry away the palm? ”

“ I do think of something else. Public receptions are more democratic than stupid state dinners—are more in keeping with the spirit of the institutions of our country, as you would say if called upon to make a stump speech. ”

“ For day after day, every public meeting illustrates afresh this same differentiation characterizing the primitive political agency, and illustrates afresh the actions of its respective parts. There is habitually the great body of the less distinguished, forming the audience, whose share in the proceedings consists in expressing approval or disapproval, and saying ay or no to the resolutions proposed. There is the smaller part, occupying the platform—the men whose wealth, position, or capacity gives them influence—the local chiefs by whom the discussions are carried on. ”

“ Let us notice what happens in a public meeting as it develops into a crowd, and see if we can trace some of the steps of the process. Picture a large meeting-hall, fairly well filled with people. Notice first of all what sort of interest it is which as a rule will most easily bring an assemblage of people together. It need not necessarily be a matter of great importance, but it must be something which catches and challenges attention without great effort. ”

“ Here again, no doubt conditions are improving, and the time may come when even the most insignificant matters afford scope for the development of habits and points of view of the utmost moment. We have also the civic clubs, really entering into the national arena to some extent, and already doing valuable public service. ”

“ The general not only took a prominent part at all public meetings, but was ever ready for the informal discussion of political affairs at all places of casual resort, where—in accordance with the custom of the time and country—the minds of men were made to operate effectually upon each other. ”

“ It would likewise have rendered the establishment very interesting to those who visit it; which is an object of more real importance than can well be imagined by those who have not had occasion to know how much the approbation and applause of the public facilitate difficult enterprizes. ”

“ Each of the orders, after becoming well organized, made it a practice to hold periodic national meetings attended with public parades and other features tending to bring attention to the order and to advance its extension. And, aside from such activities, each publicly engaged in commendable charitable work. ”

“ At their public meetings—which were held pretty often, for they had much more public than private business to attend to—they occupied a great share of their time in discussing questions which were so deep and muddy, that nobody but they ever saw to the bottom of them. ”

“ And here, for the sake of our sometimes dense friend the moralist—especially the moralist of the press, who raves against society people from the virtuous limit of an occasional afternoon tea—let me add that by entertainments and recreation I intend to include not merely formal balls and dinner-parties, but all the forms of more or less innocent edification and diversion—teas, reform meetings, theatres, receptions, concerts, lectures, clubs, sociables, fairs, and tableaux, by which people all over the country are brought together to exchange ideas and opinions in good-humored fellowship. ”

“ The crowd on the platform represented the leaders in many departments of business in the city, among whom were a fair sprinkling of men noted for their particular interest in all public charities and good works, and in a little group to one side, a small body composed of the more conservative element among the leaders of the workingmen in the city. ”

“ Instead I've seen rallies filled with crowds that stretch far into the horizon; thousands upon thousands signing up to organize online; scores who are coming to the very first political event of their lifetime. ”

“ Successes so numerous and brilliant have carried joy to the heart of your country! Your representatives have decreed a festival, to be celebrated in all the communes of the Republic, in honor of your victories. There will your fathers, mothers, wives, sisters, all who hold you dear, rejoice over your triumphs, and boast that you belong to them. ”

“ The public walks are crowded by all degrees of people in their best dresses.—The different societies, and what they call circles, assemble in the houses and gardens of individuals.—They play at cards and at bowls, and have parties upon the lake with music. ”

“ The Popular Crowd vs. the Organized Group.—In the routine life of a disciplined society there is always to be found at least one of these types. Even the abnormal [23] type of the passionate crowd is not unusual in its milder form. Any unusual event like a fire or a circus will draw scores and hundreds together, and the crowd is always liable to fall into disorder unless officers of the law are in attendance. ”

“ And after all what is really important to a nation is that the people in it—any chance crowd in a street in it should think. I confess I care very little one way or the other about the pennies being saved, or about the brewer's little touch of moral poetry, his idea that this particular crowd was solid Sunday-school from one end to the other, all through. ”

“ We want to help to express and fulfil a crowd civilization, we want to share the crowd life, to express what people in crowds feel—the great crowd sensations, excitements, the inspirations and depressions of those who live and struggle with crowds. ”

“ As such, the public relations counsel must be alive to the events of the day—not only the events that are printed but the events which are forming hour by hour, as reported in the words that are spoken on the street, in the smoking cars, in the school room, or expressed in any of the other forms of57 thought communication that make up public opinion. ”

“ How different from the crowd which one meets in the saloon of fashion, or at a political meeting, or at any other place, where men are accustomed to congregate! Here we are all jostled together, but gently, decorously. ”

“ A soap company might engage a lecturer on cleanliness to speak in the schools of leading communities. Or a woolen firm arrange for a home economics authority to lecture to women’s clubs on dress. These speeches of course, locally, gain a wider audience than the speaker would who addressed a single meeting because they give opportunity for treatment in newspapers, advertising, circularizing, and other mediums. ”

“ Appeals to the voters are made principally through public speaking, the controversial and illustrated press, the circulation of pamphlets and handbills, parades and mass-meetings, and the generous use of placards, cartoons, and other devices designed to attract and focus attention. ”

“ You will find men and women meeting every month in their lodges and clubs, discussing all sorts of things, music, art, and literature, but we find hardly any organized meetings for the discussion of the big things in life, our liberties, our rights, and our duties as citizens of this free republic. ”

“ Public gatherings of this nature should be shunned as questionable amusements, excepting, of course, any case where, from want of room, a lady may choose to give the entertainment in some public assembly-room instead of her own parlors. ”

“ It must be said that at these gatherings many people, who are too busy to pay one another frequent calls, are pleased to have the opportunity of meeting, the men to talk of politics and business, the women of dress, theatres, gossip, or scandals. ”

“ AFFIRMATION, REPETITION, CONTAGION When it is wanted to stir up a crowd for a short space of time, to induce it to commit an act of any nature—to pillage a palace, or to die in defence of a stronghold or a barricade, for instance—the crowd must be acted upon by rapid suggestion, among which example is the most powerful in its effect. To attain this end, however, it is necessary that the crowd should have been previously prepared by certain circumstances, and, above all, that he who wishes to work upon it should possess the quality to be studied farther on, to which I give the name of prestige. ”

“ Even in the towns our higher sentiments are largely formed in social meetings of one sort or another, accompanied by music, acting, dancing or speech-making, which draw one out of the more solitary currents of his thought and bring him into livelier unity with his fellows. ”

“ But while men talked politics the women and those who thought it wiser to take neither side, still amused themselves with card parties, tea parties and dances, with now and then an evening at the theater, and driving. ”

“ Whether it was a crowd that thought of stealing a penny and did or did not, if the pennies rolling around among their feet made them think, made them experiment, played upon the initiative, the individuality or invention in them, the personal self-control, the social responsibility in them, it was a crowd to be proud of. ”

“ At this time of social transition, when we all more or less feel the melting away of old divisions and parties, of old barriers of sects and schools, and the emergence of new possibilities, the continual appearance of new groupings of thought and action, such a Civic Exhibition would surely be specially valuable. In the interest, then, of the incipient renascence of civic progress, I plead for a Civic Exhibition. ”

“ The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves. ”

“ And the common festivals and exhibitions, by means of which the government is endeavoring to awaken in the individual Cantons the mind to the common unity and the common home, as well as to call forth brotherly love, are beautiful and estimable in themselves, and especially calculated for the purpose intended. ”

“ To read intelligibly, audibly, and agreeably, to speak with taste and elegance, to address an audience—whether a mass assemblage of the sovereign people, or the servants of the people, in Congress assembled, or an intelligent audience gathered for intellectual instruction and enjoyment, each require careful and persevering practice, critical discrimination and disciplined taste. ”

“ Any social gathering, that is to say, any gathering at which the persons present also have social intercourse with one another; (b) any political gathering, that is to say, any gathering at which any form of State or any principle or policy of the Government of a State is propagated, defended, attacked, criticized or discussed ”