Sargent, Porter. What Makes Lives. From "A Handbook of Private Schools," 24th edition. Boston: self-published, 1940. 230 pages.

This item was reprinted by Dale Wharton, who found a microfilm copy in the New York Public Library after an 18-month search. His interest was sparked by a three-page quotation from Sargent in a 1947 book by George Seldes. These pages recounted the repression of independent American journalism by corporate interests, in particular by the House of Morgan.

Porter Sargent (1872-1951) was an eclectic scholar and educator who published a survey of private schools beginning in 1914. He used the preface to his "Handbook" to comment on topics of the day. Sargent was shaken by the ease with which the U.S. became entangled in the first world war, and in 1940 saw the same thing happening again. (Before Pearl Harbor, isolationism was a respectable opinion in America.) Moreover, some social critics were tracking the emerging science of propaganda, and noticed how its techniques were increasingly used by governments (in this case, the British-Morgan nexus) to shape popular opinion. Sargent's interest began after Senator Gerald Nye read portions of a book by Sidney Rogerson, "Propaganda in the Next War," into the Congressional Record, "telling how Britain might seduce the U.S. into the coming war against Germany.... Porter Sargent had 10,000 reprints made, [and] sent them, with a one-page mimeograph of his own observations, to his mailing list of educators." (Time magazine, 1939-12-25)
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