Thomas Joseph Ross

Background

Thomas Joseph Ross was born in Brooklyn, N. Y. , the son of Thomas J. and Mary Egan Ross.

Education

He received his B. A. degree from St. Francis Xavier College in New York City in 1913.

Career

While an undergraduate, Ross began writing for newspapers. His first employers included the Brooklyn Eagle (once edited by Walt Whitman) and the New York Tribune. After graduation in 1913, he worked as a reporter for the New York Sun and in 1916 as political correspondent for the New York Tribune. At the Tribune he covered the 1916 presidential campaign between Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes.

In 1917, after the United States had entered World War I, Ross was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Eighteenth Cavalry. He served with the artillery and was promoted to first lieutenant before being demobilized.

In 1919, Ross was hired by Ivy Ledbetter Lee, often called the father of modern public relations, and joined Lee's firm, Lee, Harris and Lee. Its predecessor company, Parker and Lee (founded in 1904), is considered to have been one of the first public relations firms in the United States. By 1933, Ross was a senior partner in the Lee firm, which was renamed Ivy Lee and T. J. Ross. When Lee died in 1934, Ross became the firm's principal and, after 1961, chairman of the corporation T. J. Ross & Associates.

The firm developed many of the ideas common in modern public-relations practice, including the concepts that corporations ought to align themselves with the public interest, that keeping the public informed was of benefit to companies, and that the best way to inform the public was to provide the media with facts promptly and accurately. Although Ross was a major figure in the firm, his name does not seem to have been closely associated with some of the questionable aspects of its history.

From 1933 until Lee's death the following year, the firm represented the German Dye Trust, a cartel controlled by the Nazi party through I. G. Farben. The account was resigned soon after Lee died.

In 1938, Ross and two other public relations pioneers (Pendelton Dudley, who founded Dudley, Anderson and Yutzy, and John W. Hill, who was a principal in the enormously successful Hill and Knowlton) established an exclusive insider club known as the Wise Men.

Ross's firm served approximately thirty clients, among which were thought to be American Tobacco, the Bermuda Trade Development Board, Chrysler, Equitable Life Assurance Society, Rheem, Socony Mobil, and Western Union. A director of the Home Assurance Company and of Rheem, Ross was also a trustee of the Emigrant Savings Bank and president of the Harrison-Rye Realty Corporation. He was active in Catholic Church affairs in the New York City area, serving as a volunteer adviser to Francis Cardinal Spellman, a member of the Board of Founders of the Knights of Malta, and a trustee of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Fordham University, and Marymount College. He died in Rye, N. Y.

Achievements

• During Ross's tenure as a public relations counsel, the United States extend diplomatic recognition to and open trade with the Soviet Union. He was a founder of the insider club "The Wise Men". It is believed to have had a significant influence on the contemporary practice of public relations.

Views

Quotations: Ross's philosophy regarding the practice of public relations may be summed up in a remark he made to a Fortune magazine interviewer: "Unless you are willing to resign an account or a job over a matter of principle, it is no use to call yourself a member of the world's newest profession--for you are already a member of the world's oldest. "

Connections

Ross married Marion A. Byrne on October 6, 1917. They had four children.

Father:

Thomas J. Ross

Mother:

Mary Egan Ross

Spouse:

Marion A. Byrne