ABSTRACT
The third public relations agency organized in the Seedbed Era — Parker & Lee — had an even shorter life than the first two; it lasted less than 4 years, but the name of the junior partner, Ivy Ledbetter Lee, lives today as one of the influential pioneers who helped define and build a new vocation. Ivy Lee reappears in our chronicle as one of the influential builders of a new calling in the post World War I era. George Frederick Parker, veteran newsman and political publicist, and the younger Ivy Lee first met in the headquarters of the Democratic Party in 1904. In the Presidential campaign that year, they worked together, Parker in charge, in a futile effort to elect Judge Alton B. Parker, a conservative Democrat. They were up against the astute, colorful, publicity-minded Theodore Roosevelt who was riding the crest of the Progressive wave of reform. Roosevelt was a master publicist in his own right.
