“Lighting the Way to the Day When Women Would Smoke As Casually As Men”: Newspaper Coverage of the 1929 Torches of Freedom Campaign

Edward Bernays’ Torches of Freedom campaign has become a classic case study in persuasion, psychology, and public relations ethics. The campaign, part of the 1929 New York City Easter parade, consisted of hiring carefully selected cigarette smoking women to “smash the discriminatory taboo for cigarettes and women.”[1] Though the women spoke and behaved as if they were self motivated, they were paid spokespeople and part of Bernays’ work conducted on behalf of the American Tobacco Company. Bernays’ psychological research had indicated that if he could equate smoking with power, he could sell cigarettes to women who, at the time, generally considered smoking to be socially unacceptable. Using this information and the national media, Bernays dispatched his marchers and successfully aligned smoking with the suffrage movement.

Bernays, as most would expect in 1929, did not disclose information regarding the exchange of money. He did, however, notify the press of his marketing strategy disguised as a protest. Photos of the women and news stories appeared across the country and even internationally. Within a year, cigarette sales had tripled. Most public relations histories provide a description of the event while also noting that massive news coverage played a significant role in encouraging women to smoke. But to date, the news coverage as not been extensively analyzed. This study will examine how New York City newspapers responded to the Torches of Freedom Campaign and, as such, how they framed the event and served as a readily available marketing tool for the tobacco company. The researchers will identify key messages that appeared in the articles and identify rhetorical frames that aligned smoking with personal freedom. The primary research question focuses on how the newspapers conveyed attitudes regarding women and smoking, and how the news content may have fit into the larger public relations campaign.

 

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[1] “American Women Keep Knees in View, Defying Paris Edict,” The Charleston Daily Mail, April 1, 1929, 1.

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