不少研究1905年抵制美貨運動的學者認為這個抵制運動是中國的排外運動或是具有政治色彩的民族主義運動。他們忽略了這個運動的社會層面，尤其是其宣傳策略和動員力量，本文將針對這個被忽略的課題進行探索。中文指出，發起抵制運動的團體和個人採用各種各樣的方法來動員群眾，其中包括使用不同的宣傳方式來影響不同教育程度的群眾。抵制運動的發起人（主要是知識分子和商人階級）透過報紙的議論文章和其他出版品向有相當教育水平的同胞宣傳。對於目不識丁者，他們則採用漫畫、歌曲、街頭演講、戲劇和資料展覽會來達到宣傳的效果。對於一些所謂的半文盲者，他們用簡單易懂的文宣，如通俗的廣告標語來使這些民眾瞭解。在各種教育水平觀眾齊聚的群眾上，他們會採用一些大家都會明白的口號等宣傳術語來鼓動群眾的情緒。這種多樣化的宣傳方式也被往後的其他群眾運動所模仿和採用。

　　　　　Previous studies of the 1905 anti-American boycott have considered the protest to be an anti-foreign movement or a nationalism-inspired political movement. They have failed to take account of its social aspects. Unlike the history of protest movements in later years, no existing account has systematically analyzed the propaganda techniques and mobilization strategies of the boycott. I intend to explore this neglected aspect of the boycott campaign in this article. In fact, throughout the struggle, different groups of boycotters used different varieties of language when speaking to different audiences, and sometimes the same boycotters employed different varieties of language in different situations. When boycott promoters, mostly from the cultural and commercial elite, spoke to one another, they used newspapers and other written publications as the means of dialogue. When they spoke to the illiterate they used pictorial illustrations, songs, street-corner lectures, theatrical performances, and material object exhibitions. When they spoke to a semiliterate audience they employed devices with few written characters, such as handbills, leaflets, and placards written in the plain language of popular literature. Finally, when they spoke to a crowd of people from various social groups, during mass meetings and memorial services, they spoke through a combination of different levels of languages, and they used key terms that would be meaningful to all classes of people. The significance of the study of propaganda and mobilization strategies lies in the finding that many techniques used by activists of popular protests in later decades were similar to that of 1905.