Background
Hill was born on November 26, 1890 in Shelbyville, Indiana, United States. He was the third of four sons of Theophilus Wiley Hill and Katherine Jameson. His father, whom Hill called a first-rate farmer but a poor business manager.
(Book by Hill, John W.)
Book by Hill, John W.
https://www.amazon.com/Making-Public-Relations-Business-Classics/dp/0844232580?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0844232580
Hill was born on November 26, 1890 in Shelbyville, Indiana, United States. He was the third of four sons of Theophilus Wiley Hill and Katherine Jameson. His father, whom Hill called a first-rate farmer but a poor business manager.
Hill's father lacked money for his college education; thus, upon graduation from high school, Hill worked as a journalist for newspapers in Shelbyville, Indiana, and Akron, Ohio, before studying English and journalism at Indiana University from 1910 to 1912. He briefly returned to Indiana University but did not receive a degree.
Hill left Indiana University to work on the family farm. Hill claimed that on the farm he read from Everyman's Library up to fifteen hours a day. Hill worked as a journalist in the Midwest before moving in 1915 to Cleveland.
He was a reporter for the Cleveland News for two years, developed a newsletter aimed at local business executives for the Cleveland Trust Company, and in 1917 joined Daily Metal Trade, a steel publication, as financial editor. John Sherwin Sr. , head of the Union Trust Company, offered to retain Hill as a publicist. Having no other accounts, Hill insisted that Sherwin find him more clients. Sherwin secured Otis Steel, and Hill opened his corporate publicity firm in April 1927.
The Great Depression solidified Hill's career in public relations. He added a partner, Donald Snow Knowlton, in March 1933, and in November the new agency landed its flagship client, the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), the largest account in the nation. Like many business leaders, steel executives - and Hill - were horrified by the depression, but even more by what they considered the Roosevelt administration's intrusion into business decision making.
Throughout his career Hill sought to educate Americans about the free-enterprise system, hoping they would reject government growth. The first major crisis for the agency was the "Little Steel" strike of 1937, which resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen organizers. A subcommittee of the Senate Labor and Education Committee investigated the strike, including Hill and Knowlton's activities for the AISI and several steel firms. Senator Robert M. La Follette Jr. , suspected but could not prove agency involvement in antiunion "citizen's committees. " The agency grew rapidly during the 1930s and 1940s. Among its clients were the Petroleum Industrial Committee, Standard Oil of Ohio, Warner-Swasey, and the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, along with several steel companies and the AISI. In 1938, Hill and Knowlton opened a branch in New York City to attend to the steel account; Hill handled the New York business while Knowlton remained in Ohio.
World War II brought increased business, and Hill's office soon outpaced Knowlton's. The two severed their partnership in 1947, with Hill running Hill and Knowlton, Inc. , in New York, and Knowlton heading Hill and Knowlton of Cleveland; each held a minute portion of the other's company.
Hill's connections with steel executives served the New York agency well. Republic Steel director Victor Emanuel retained Hill and Knowlton of New York during World War II for Aviation Corporation, and eventually for his entire conglomerate (Avco Manufacturing). Emanuel also set up Hill and Knowlton as counsel for the Aircraft Industries Association (AIA) to win military contracts after the war.
Hill's relationship with his earliest clients established an important precedent for the agency. While many of his contemporaries favored flash and flamboyance, Hill modeled his career after Ivy Lee, who had worked directly with such magnates as the Rockefellers. Like Lee, Hill considered his role to be ensuring that the client's policies were sound and aligned with the public interest, and then publicizing them widely. Hill attended all board meetings of the AISI, Avco, and the AIA, all three of which remained clients for many years. Board participation by public relations counsel was not typical before Hill's career, and it symbolized the distinction between his agency and many others. Hill and Knowlton established its trade association clients as the definitive sources of statistical and other information on their industries for both the press and the government, in the process earning a reputation for honest, ethical representation.
Serving as the voice of big business, Hill accepted many controversial accounts. His agency counseled the steel industry through President Harry S. Truman's unpopular seizure of the mills to avert a strike in 1952 and President John F. Kennedy's attack on a price increase ten years later; the tobacco industry, beginning with the cigarettes-and-health scare of the mid-1950s, with a program that included formation of the Tobacco Institute in 1958; the Natural Gas and Oil Resources Committee (NGORC) from 1954 to 1956, when a lobbyist not affiliated with Hill and Knowlton attempted to bribe a United States senator, thereby killing the industry's hope for deregulation; and the pharmaceutical industry during the Kefauver hearings of the early 1960s. Although associations comprised the agency's biggest accounts, it also counseled corporations: Gillette, Procter and Gamble, Texaco, Studebaker, and Owens-Illinois. Hill also created a model for a firm that was bigger than its founder: beginning in 1960, he gradually withdrew from participation below the policy-making level and reduced his personal holdings in the agency. He retired as chairman and chief executive officer in 1962 but continued to occupy the corner office until his death in New York City.
Hill was a tall, long-faced man who dressed like a banker.
Hill married Hildegarde Beck, the daughter of the first conductor of the city's symphony, on June 19, 1916. They divorced in 1938, and he married Elena Karam on December 2, 1949, and adopted two children.