Pledge of Allegiance Was Created to Promote Flags to US Colleges?

For years, a rumor has circulated on-line that the Pledge of Allegiance was a “advertising device” used to promote extra flags to U.S. colleges. A reddit consumer posted the declare within the subreddit r/todayilearned in 2017, for instance. This declare has additionally circulated on different social media websites, comparable to Facebook and X, and is partly true, although promoting flags wasn’t the one motive the pledge was created. 

In 1888, one of many largest publications within the United Sates, The Youth’s Companion, began a college flag marketing campaign to extend patriotism after the journal’s advertising director, John Upham, noticed a scarcity thereof. He wished extra flags to be put into colleges throughout the nation. Richard J. Ellis, a professor of political science at Willamette College, wrote concerning the scheme in his 2005 guide “To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance.” 

In its October 1888 premium challenge, the Youth’s Companion for the primary time supplied American flags for buy. Flags of assorted sizes had been supplied to readers at diminished costs, from thirty cents for a 12-by-18-inch ornamental silk flag to fifteen {dollars} for a large 10-by-20-foot bunting flag. A 3-by-5-foot bunting flag could possibly be obtained for 2 {dollars}, or for 2 subscriptions and seventy-five cents, and a 2-by-3-foot silk flag could possibly be had for one greenback, or for one new subscriber and forty cents. The hope, the commercial introduced, was “to encourage the thought of Flag ornament in house and school-room.” The Companion lamented that whereas “we adorn our properties most profusely,” we seldom use “that the majority stunning and provoking of objects, the American Flag.” The journal hoped that the “Stars and Stripes [might] be hung upon the partitions of each house, and of each classroom within the land” in order that “patriotism and love of liberty [would] be unceasingly taught.

A report from College of Rochester Library Bulletin described Upham’s marketing campaign:

“Once I was a boy within the little crimson schoolhouse,” [Upham] mentioned, “each Friday some boy declaimed Webster’s speeches concerning the Union and the forefathers. We had been introduced up within the very ambiance of patriotism. Are the youngsters getting that tradition now? No. We should begin it up once more. The flag will do it. I wish to see the flag over each schoolhouse. What’s extra, I would like the youngsters to place it there themselves. I would like them to lift the cash to purchase their flag. In the event that they try this, the Boards of Schooling will give the employees. After we get that properly began we’ll go additional. We’ll stand up a flag-raising train for the youngsters to affix in saying. What an amazing factor that can be.

“Consider it. A flag over each college to remind the youngsters that they belong to the nation in addition to the city. Then, the youngsters each day uniting earlier than the flag in patriotic workout routines which is able to fire up their love of nation.”

That was the programmed work really undertaken in 1891. It was by no means talked about within the newspapers. It was by no means marketed outdoors of the promotion notices of The Youth’s Companion itself. It was a nonetheless hunt, one college after one other. The standard technique was to supply to any pupil in any college, free, 100 playing cards on which had been printed the phrases:

This Certificates, representing a ten cent contribution, entitles the holder to One Share within the patriotic affect of the Faculty Flag.

These hundred playing cards at ten cents every coated the wholesale value of the good-sized, substantial flag.

This frank little scheme labored amazingly. In a 12 months’s time it was estimated that thirty thousand flags had been raised in entrance of schoolhouses from Maine to California. By that point the tutorial papers had been speaking concerning the motion and academics’ conventions had been serving to it alongside. Numerous patriotic organizations acknowledged it.

After the success of the flag marketing campaign from 1888-91, Upham began a brand new marketing campaign centered round a celebration of Columbus’ arrival within the Americas. In a Youth’s Companion issue from Sept. 8, 1892, the directions for the “Nationwide Faculty Celebration of Columbus Day” had been printed and featured the Pledge of Allegiance for the primary time. The journal gave away a flag with each new subscription, which relations of the writer, Francis Bellamy, said grew from 400,000 to 600,000 after the 1892 advertising marketing campaign. 

In 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the USA Flag Code into legislation, codifying current guidelines relating to civilian show of the flag. The Flag Code outlines the proper solution to ship the pledge. In 1954, underneath the Eisenhower administration, the phrase “underneath God” was inserted into the pledge instantly after “one nation” to emphasise the USA’ rejection of “godless Communism.” Because the pledge’s preliminary set up in public colleges within the 1800s, quite a few individuals have criticized it, even resulting in a number of U.S. Supreme Courtroom circumstances. Most notably, in West Virginia State Board of Schooling v. Barnette in 1943, the excessive courtroom reversed a earlier ruling that said a public college may power college students to recite the pledge within the classroom. 

Earlier than all of that, the Pledge of Allegiance was a catalyst for the rise in gross sales of the Youth’s Companion journal and likewise flags in its first rendition in lecture rooms throughout the nation in 1892. Advertising American flags to colleges was one of many causes for the creation of the Pledge of Allegiance, however not the one motive. On that foundation, we have now labeled this declare a “Combination” of true and false.