World War I propaganda reached 134 million Americans via volunteer speakers

Evidence

Because Creel’s committee kept meticulous records, we have some measure of how many people he reached. The U.S. government printed 75 million pamphlets and books (compare with USA Today, which has a subscription of 1.6 million). It introduced the “Four Minute Man” program, in which ordinary citizens were asked to give pro-war speeches, four minutes in length, at movie theaters while the reels were being changed. The more than 75,000 volunteers delivered a total of 755,190 speeches, reaching a very precisely estimated 134,454,514 people. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 158

Categorization

• SEED: A measurement essay comparing pre-mass-media reach (134M via volunteers) against modern platform reach — the Four Minute Man as an early attention-harvesting infrastructure.
• SHARE: For a friend writing about the history of propaganda infrastructure — the Four Minute Man speeches’ precise 134,454,514 count is exactly their kind of granular detail.
• XREF: connects to: World War I forced the first systematic state-run propaganda campaigns. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 127; WWI propaganda pioneered totalizing capture of every available medium — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 156; World War I hate-propaganda films drew record crowds in US cities (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• World War I hate-propaganda films drew record crowds in US cities #corroborates (0.75)
• Wartime propaganda pamphlets could sell hundreds of thousands of copies #corroborates (0.70) — Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen, The Library- A Fragile History, 748