I have predicated all my own work on the basic truth that people are susceptible to suggestion. We live, move and have our being in a swirl of suggestion, from morning till night, and from the age of reason to the edge of the grave.
One suggestion accepted by one person becomes his or her personal opinion. This personal opinion, accepted by a group of people, becomes the thing known as public opinion. A favorable public opinion concerning a man or a manufactured product becomes the thing known as reputation.
Good reputation, in turn, is a thing that sells goods. I maintain that it is no more difficult to convey a suggestion to a multiplicity of minds than it is to one mind.
If that much is granted, or if I can prove that it has been accomplished, we have established a very simple premise which carries in its train very astonishing results.
If it is true that by printed propaganda, a favorable and friendly opinion can be generated in a multiplicity of minds, then it is equally true that we have found a hothouse in which a good reputation can be generated, as it were, over night.
In other words, the thing for which men in the past have been willing to slave and toil for a lifetime, they can now set out to achieve with semi-scientific accuracy and assurance of success, in periods of months instead of years.