Many historians credit Lee with being the originator of modern crisis communications. His principal competitor in the new public relations industry was
Edward Bernays, and he has been credited with influencing
Pendleton Dudley to enter the then-nascent field. In 1914, he was to enter public relations on a much larger scale when he was retained by
John D. Rockefeller Jr to represent his family and
Standard Oil ("to burnish the family image"), after their bloody repression of the coal mining strike in Colorado known as the "
Ludlow Massacre." Lee warned that the Rockefellers were losing public support due to ordering the massacre of striking workers and their families (and the burning of their homes). He developed a strategy that Junior followed to repair it. It was necessary for Junior to overcome his shyness, go personally to Colorado to meet with the miners and their families, inspect the conditions of the homes and the factories, attend social events and listen to the grievances (all the while being photographed for press releases). This was novel advice which attracted widespread media attention, and opened the way to wallpaper over the conflict and present a more humanized version of the wealthy Rockefellers. Lee guided public relations of
Rockefellers and their corporate interests, including a strong involvement in the
construction of the Rockefeller Center, even after he moved on to establish his own consulting firm. He was the person who brought the original, unfunded plan for
Metropolitan Opera's expansion to Junior's attention, and he convinced Junior to rename the center after the family against the latter's wishes. Lee became an inaugural member of the
Council on Foreign Relations in the US when it was established in New York in 1921. In the early 1920s, he promoted friendly relations with Soviet Russia. In 1926, Lee wrote a famous letter to the president of the
US Chamber of Commerce in which he presented a convincing argument for the need to normalize US-Soviet political and economic relations. His supposed instruction to the son of the Standard Oil fortune was to echo in public relations henceforth: "Tell the truth, because sooner or later the public will find out anyway. And if the public doesn't like what you are doing, change your policies and bring them into line with what people want." The context of the quote was said to be apocryphal, being spread by Lee as self-promotion, making it both famous and infamous. Lee is considered to be the father of the modern public relations campaign when, from 1913 to 1914, he successfully lobbied for a railroad rate increase from a reluctant federal government. Lee espoused a philosophy consistent with what has sometimes been called the "two-way street" approach to public relations, in which PR consists of helping clients listen as well as communicate messages to their publics. Lee advised foreign governments and provided public relations counsel to a German company during the early days of the Nazi government, work that put him in communication with the party leaders, possibly including Adolf Hitler. Shortly before his death in 1934, the
US Congress had been investigating his work in
Germany on behalf of the company
IG Farben. During his work with the Dye Trust, Lee protested the group's use of Nazi propaganda and fascist messages. But in doing so, he may have been unaware that his advice was being transmitted directly to the Nazi government and that the Dye Trust had quickly become nationalized under the regime. Lee also worked for the
Bethlehem Steel Corporation, in which capacity he famously advised managers to list and number their top priorities every day, and work on tasks in the order of their importance until daily time allows, not proceeding until a task was completed. For this suggestion company head
Charles M. Schwab later paid him $25,000 (the equivalent of $400,000 in 2016 dollars), saying it had been the most profitable advice he had received.{{cite book ==Effect on productivity studies==