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dissertation entitled

RETHINKING THE ORIGINS OF PUBLIC OPINION:
AN ANALYSIS OF NATION AND RACE
IN HARWOOD CHILDS' PRINCETON PUBLIC
OPINION SYLLABUS, 1886 TO 1933

presented by

Katherine Anne Bradshaw

has been accepted towards fulfillment
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Ph.D. Mass Media

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6/01 cJCIFiClDaeDuepes-sz

RETHINKING THE ORIGINS OF PUBLIC OPINION:
AN ANALYSIS OF NATION AND RACE
TN HARWOOD CHILDS’ PRINCETON PUBLIC OPINION SYLLABUS,
1886 TO 1933
BY

KATHERINE ANNE BRADSHAW

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Departments of Journalism, Telecommunication and Advertising

2001

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ABSTRACT
RETHINKING THE ORIGINS OF PUBLIC OPINION: AN ANALYSIS OF
NATION AND RACEIN HARWOOD CHILDS’ PRINCETON PUBLIC OPINION
SYLLABUS, 1886 TO 1933
BY

KATHERINE ANNE BRADSHAW

This dissertation is a close reading of a selection of articles from Harwood
Childs’ Princeton University syllabus published in 1934. Childs founded Public
Opinion Quarterly and taught one of the first university classes in the public opinion.
His syllabus is considered the canon of the emerging field. The public opinion
literature is recounted as a narrative called the Received Tradition of Public Opinion.
Critics of polling are reviewed. The content of the articles are read through the lenses
of historical understanding, and recent race and nation scholarship.

Today, the dominant understanding of the concept of public opinion is that
public opinion is what polls measure in a manner similar to one-person, one vote.
Most people see public opinion polls as a way for people to make their views known
to lawmakers and to each other. The literature places the beginning of the study of
public opinion in 1936 and 1937. In November 1936, George Gallup correctly
predicted Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election as president and the Literary Digest did not.

In January 193 7, Public Opinion Quarterly first was published.

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Those who recount the story of the field emphasize the democratic potential of _
polling. They tell a progress story cuhninating with Gallup’s (and others) polling on
social issues. The common men responding to polls are wise. However. those who
have explained the history of public opinion as polling have overlooked or
misunderstood the literature written before the claimed founding.

This analysis of the canon of public opinion shows the common man is not
wise. The common man needed instruction by his betters in order to save democracy.
The common man was seen as dangerous or irrational and as easily led.

At the least, this dissertation gives support to the critic’s claims that public
opinion polling diminishes dissent. The image of a homogeneous united nation of
equal responding individual citizens in poll results is at odds with the perception of the
nation and its citizens before 1936. Race still matters, even if we have forgotten the
assumption of stratification of human beings by nationality as when the term nation
was inflected with race. Thinking of public opinion as poll results makes it more
difficult to see social stratification and interests that make material differences to
people. The success of public opinion as polling and the pollsters’ claims to serve
democracy covers relations of power previously visible. The authors of the articles
published 1886 to 1934 had no doubts that a few should lead because the many were
incompetent. This dissertation suggests Gallup’s claim to make the voice of the
common man heard was perhaps not an advocacy of democratic practice, but rather a

clever use of “popular dogma” to promote his polls to newspapers and readers.

ft; m

Copyright by
KATHERINE ANNE BRADSHAW
2001

To my family of fi'iends, especially

Kathy Walker
Cathy Zimmer

Leslie Aguillard
Teresa Mastin

Nancy Whitmore

Don Bishop
and the memory of my mother

Marilyn Jane Park

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I must acknowledge the financial support of Michigan State University, the
Graduate School, and the School of Journalism. I could not have taken on this
challenge without their help. Further, I wish to acknowledge the importance to me of
the student loan program from the United States Department of Education.

Thanks to the members of my dissertation committee who were patient and
understanding. From each of them I received much encouragement, support and
intellectual challenge. I could not have found a better group to guide me through my
studies and this dissertation. Thanks to chair Lucinda Davenport, Janice Bukovac,
Dean Rehberger and Charles Salmon.

The School of Journalism at Michigan State provided a nurturing atmosphere
to become a scholar and the opportunity to teach. The faculty and staff were
unceasingly supportive. Special thanks to Raye Grill, Dee Dee Johnson, and Barb
Miller for their kindness and support. Thanks also to Todd Simon, Steve Lacy, Eric
Friedman, and Fred Fico.

Fortunately I was surrounded by enthusiastic colleagues in the Mass Media
program at Michigan State. Thanks to graduate students Teresa Mastin, Alice Chan,
Nancy Whitmore, Anne Hoag, and Mahen Saverimuttu. Thanks also to Shelley
Campo and Ester Baker. I was well prepared for Mass Media program by my training
at Ohio University. I want to thank Pat Washburn, graduate director, for his example.

Thanks also to Guido Stempel 111, Joe Bemt, Eddith Dashielle, Ralph Izard, Mike

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Sweeney, and Jim Foust. Thanks also to Phyllis Cross, Debbie DePeel, and Diane
Campbell.

In addition to the financial resources and the members of the academic
community who have made this journey and this project possible, there are other
peOple who deserve mention.

I would never have begun to imagine this project with out the vision of my best
friend Kathy Walker. Her encouragement made it possible to take the first step. I
could not have continued with out Cathy Zimmer’s support. Because I was injured in
a car accident the summer before the doctoral program because, Cathy drove to East
Lansing every few weeks for several years. She carried groceries, did other chores and
was unfailingly supportive.

Thanks also to Don Bishop and Leslie Aguillard. Their encouragement all
along the way was irreplaceable.

Finally, thanks to my mother, Marilyn Park. She believed adventures were

worth the risks, and I could lasso the moon.

vii

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: THE CHANGING CONCEPTS OF PUBLIC OPINION AND

NATION ............................................................................................ 1
Mainstream public opinion is poll results ................................................... 1
Democracy and Public Opinion Polls ..................................................... 1
Public Opinion and Nation Emerge ....................................................... 3
Nation, Race, and Citizen .................................................................. 4
Rank Order by Race ......................................................................... 6
Objective ....................................................................................... 7
Analysis of the Syllabus ..................................................................... 8
Markers of Public Opinion as Poll Results ................................................ 9
Harwood Childs, POQ Founder .......................................................... 10
Syllabus as Canon ........................................................................... 11
Chroniclers of the Received Tradition .................................................... 13
Analysis of the Articles in the Canon ..................................................... 14
Why look at the canon of public opinion in 1934 ........................................ 15
Chapter Two: The received tradition ...................................................... 17
Chapter Three: Nation and Nationalism ................................................... 18
Chapters Four and Five: The Articles .................................................... 18
Chapter Six: Summary and Conclusions ................................................. 19

CHAPTER 2

THE RECEIVED TRADITION OF THE CONCEPT OF PUBLIC OPINION ........ 22
Introduction to the Received Tradition .................................................... 22
Eighteenth Century Beginnings ........................................................... 25
James Bryce and an expansion of interest in Public Opinion ........................... 30
The Early Decades of the Twentieth Century ............................................. 33
Nineteenth Century Straw Polls Continue into the Twentieth Century ............... 34
Social Surveys ................................................................................. 35
Survey ......................................................................................... 37
Sampling ...................................................................................... 38
Advertising and Marketing ................................................................. 41
The Twenties ................................................................................. 44
The Thirties .................................................................................. 45
Harwood Childs and Public Opinion Quarterly ........................................ 48
George Gallup ................................................................................ 53
Alternative Views of Public Opinion: Critics of the Polls ............................. 64

Reconsidered: Received Tradition of Public Opinion Polling as Progress Story...68

viii

CHAPTER 3

NATIONALISM AND NATION .............................................................. 71
Gellner ........................................................................................ 77
Hobsbawm .................................................................................... 88
Gellner and Hobsbawm .................................................................... 102
Racial Theories in the United States of America ....................................... 103
Verdery ....................................................................................... 107

CHAPTER 4

HARWOOD CHILDS’ PUBLIC OPINION SYLLABUS ARTICLES FROM 1886

TO 1919 ........................................................................................ 1 l4
W.T. Stead, “Government by Journalism,”

in Contemporary Review in 1886 ........................................................ 1 19
J.W. Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion,”

in The American Journal of Sociology in 1985 ......................................... 122
E. L. Godkin, “The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion,”

in Atlantic Monthly in 1898 ............................................................... 125
Walter C. Hamm, “A Study of Presidential Votes,”

in Political Science Quarterly in 1901 .................................................. 127
Edward Porritt, “The Value of Political Editorials”
in Atlantic Monthly in 1910 ............................................................... 128
Walter J. Shepard, “Public Opinion” ~
in The American Journal of Sociology in 1910 ........................................ 129
F. Stuart Chapin, “The variability of the popular vote at presidential elections”
in The American Journal of Sociology in 1912 ......................................... 133

Sydney G. Fisher, “The Legendary and Myth Making Process in Histories of the
American Revolution”
in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for

Promoting Usefid Knowledge in 1912 ................................................... 134

George Kibbe Turner, “Manufacturing Public Opinion”

in McClure 's Magazine in 1912 .......................................................... 138

Philip Marshall Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy”

in North American Review in 1916 ...................................................... 138

William F. Ogburn and Delvin Peterson, “Political Thought of Social Classes”

in Political Science Quarterly in 1916 .................................................. 142

Arthur Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy”

in Atlantic Monthly in 1917 ............................................................... 143

Charles E. Merriam, “American Publicity in Italy”

in The American Political Science Review in 1919 .................................... 145
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CHAPTER 5
HARWOOD CHILDS’ PUBLIC OPINION SYLLABUS ARTICLES FROM 1920

TO 1933 ......................................................................................... 150
Paul Rohrbach, “German Reflections”
in Atlantic Monthly in 1920 ............................................................... 155
Joseph Roy Geiger, “The Effects of the Motion Picture on the Mind and Morals of
the Young” in International Journal of Ethics in 1923 ............................... 156

A. Gordon Dewey, “On Methods in the Study of Politics 1” and “On Methods in
the Study of Politics 11”

in Political Science Quarterly in 1923 and 1924 ....................................... 158
William Ernest Hocking, “Leaders and Led”
in The Yale Review in 1924 .............................................................. 160

Emory S. Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins” and “Measuring Social
Distance”

in Journal of Applied Sociology in 1924 and 1925 .................................... 162
Floyd H. Allport and D. A. Hartman, “The measurement and motivation of atypical
opinion in a certain group”

in The American Political Science Review in 1925 .................................... 171
William Seal Carpenter, “Methods of Political Reasoning”

in The American Journal of Sociology in 1925 ......................................... 173
Arthur N. Holcombe, “Round Table on Political Statistics: The Measurement of
Public Opinion”

in The American Political Science Review in 1925 .................................... 174
Norman C. Meier, “Motives in Voting: A Study in Public Opinion

in The American Journal of Sociology in 1925 ........................................ 179
W.T. Root, “The Psychology of Radicalism”

in Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1925 ............................ 185
George A. Lundberg, “The Newspaper and Public Opinion”

in Social Forces in 1926 .................................................................. 187
William B. Munro, “The Worst Fundamentalism”

in Atlantic Monthly in 1926 ............................................................... 189
Charles Angoff, “Higher Learning Goes to War”

in American Mercury in 1927 ............................................................ 194
Frederick Bausman, “Under Which Flag”

in American Mercury in 1927 ............................................................ 195
Harold Lasswell, “The Theory of Political Propaganda”

in The American Political Science Review in 1927 .................................... 197
William Bennett Munro, “Modern Science and Politics”

in Yale Review in 1927 ..................................................................... 198
William Orton, “News and Opinion”

in The American Journal of Sociology in 1927 ......................................... 203

Donald Young, “Some effects of a course in American race problems on the race
prejudice of 450 undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania”

in Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1927 .............................. 205
Robert C. Binkley, “The Concept of Public Opinion in the Social Sciences”

in Social Forces in 1928 ................................................................... 207
Lowell Juillard Carr, “Public Opinion as a Dynamic Concept”

in Sociology and Social Research in 1928 .............................................. 21 1
Richard T. Lapiere, “Race Prejudice: France and England”

in Social Forces in 1928 .................................................................. 212
James Reinhardt, “Students and Race Feeling”

in The Survey in 1928 ..................................................................... 217
L.L. Thurstone, “Attitudes Can Be Measured”

in The American Journal of Sociology 1928 ............................................ 219
Edward S. Corwin, “The Democratic Dogma and the Future of Political Science”
in The American Political Science Review in 1929 .................................... 222
Oliver McKee, “Lobbying for Good or Evil”

in The North American Review in 1929 ................................................. 224
Frank R. Kent, “The Great Lobby Hunt”

in Scribner ’s in 1930 ....................................................................... 225
George A. Lundberg, “Public Opinion from a Behavioristic Viewpoint”

in The American Journal of Sociology in 1930 ......................................... 227
Charles E. Merriam, “Research Problems in the Field of Parties, Elections, and
Leadership”

in The American Political Science Review in 1930 .................................... 231

George B. Vetter, “The Measurement of Social and Political Attitudes and the
Related Personality Factors”

in Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1930 .............................. 233
D. D. Droba, “Methods Used for Measuring Public Opinion”
in The American Journal of Sociology in 1931 ......................................... 237
Harold D. Lasswell, “The Measurement of Public Opinion”
in The American Political Science Review in 1931 .................................... 238
Roscoe C. Martin, “The Municipal Electorate: A Case Study”
in The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly in 1933 ............................... 241
Francis G. Wilson, “Concepts of Public Opinion”
in The American Political Science Review in 1933 .................................... 242
CHAPTER 6
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ...................................................... 245

 

 

 

Contribution to the Literature on Public Opinion ..................................... 256

Importance of this study .................................................................. 258
Meaning ..................................................................................... 258
Suggestions for Future Research ......................................................... 260
BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................. 262

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Chapter One

Introduction: The Changing Concepts of Public Opinion and Nation

Mainstream public opinion is poll results

 

It is widely agreed that the term “public opinion” means the aggregation of
individual opinions in a style of one person, one vote. In the minds of politicians,
citizens, and most scholars, the concept of public opinion is equated with poll results.l
A concept is a general idea. The common sense understanding of public opinion is
that it is poll results. Common sense is knowledge about a concept that is widely and
generally taken-for-granted as what everyone knows to be true. The strength of this
mainstream understanding of public opinion as poll results was noted by many
scholars. Former director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of
Michigan and co-author of The American Voter, Elections and the Political Order,
Philip E. Converse, noted in 1987 that the tally of opinions reported by polls and
surveys had become the understanding of public opinion around the world.2
Democracy and Public Opinion Polls

Pollster George Gallup successfully promoted the conception of public opinion
as what polls measure from 1935 to 1984. Respected sociologist and media scholar

Michael Schudson recently pointed out in his book, The Good Citizen, that Gallup’s

 

' Philip E. Converse, “Changing Conceptions of Public Opinion in the political process, " Public
Opinion Quarterly 51 (1987): $12-13.
2 Converse, P. “Changing Conceptions,” S14.

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conception of public opinion expressed in polls and linked to democracy has been a
success in spite of many criticisms from social psychology and democratic theory.3
Schudson wrote, “Polling, in contrast [to the critiques of public opinion as polling], on
its own terms must be judged a monumental success. Both as a critique of other
imperfect measures of ‘what the common man thinks’ and as a positive resource for
democracy, the legacy of George Gallup is great.’” Additionally, many scholars have
noted the close link between Gallup’s concept of public opinion and democracy.5
Public opinion polls are thought of as a way for citizens to communicate their thoughts
to those who govern.‘5 The strength of the dominant understanding of public opinion
as poll results is further revealed by its tenacity in spite of repeated and varied

critiques.7 The current common sense notion of equating the concept of public opinion

 

3 Michael Schudson, The Good Citizen: A history of American civic life (New York: The Free Press,
1998), 228.

‘ Michael Schudson, The Good Citizen, 228.

5Jean M. Converse, Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence 1890-1960
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 123-127; Harwood Childs, Public Opinion: nature,

formation, and role (Princeton, New Jersey: D. VanNostrand Company, Inc., 1965), 30-31; Susan
Herbst, Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1995), 44-45, 69-70; Philip E. Converse, “Changing Conceptions of Public Opinion,”
$12-$24; Harold F. Gosnell, “The Polls and other Mechanisms of Democracy,” Public Opinion
Quarterly 4 (l940):4l4-424; John C. Ranney, “Do the Polls Serve Democracy,” Public Opinion
Quarterly 10 (1946): 349-360; L. John Martin, “The Genealogy of Public Opinion Polling” The Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 472 (I984): 12- 23.

6 Charles T. Salmon and Theodore L. Glasser, “The Politics of Polling and the Limits of Consent,”
in Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent eds. Theodore L. Glasser and Charles T. Salmon
(New York: Guilford, 1995).

7 For examples of the criticisms see: Theodore L. Glasser and Charles T. Salmon, Public Opinion
and the Communication of Consent (New York: The Guilford Press, 1995); Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann,
The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion — Our Social Skin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993);
Herbst, Numbered Voices; Pierre Bourdieu, “Public Opinion Does Not Exist” in Communication and
Class Struggle eds. Armand Mattelart and Seth Siegelaub (New York: International General, 1979):
124-130; Herbert Blummer, “Public Opinion and Public Opinion Polling,” American Sociological
Review 13 (1948): 542-554; Lindsay Rogers, The Pollsters: Public Opinion, Politics, and Democratic
Leadership (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949); Michael Wheeler, Lies, damn lies, and statistics: The
manipulation of public opinion in America (New York: Dell, 1976); Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive

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with poll results began to take hold in the middle of the 19305. As Converse noted.
before about 1937 there were many different meanings for the concept of public
opinion. He wrote, “A variety of meanings abounded, some of them in the same
heads.”8

Public Opinion and Nation Emerge

 

While the idea of public opinion meaning poll results started to take hold of the
imaginations of citizens, politicians and scholars in the late 19305, the idea of some
kind of public opinion started to emerge for intellectuals about the time of the
revolutions in what would become the United States of America and France.9 The
concept of “nation” emerged about the same time.

Similar to public opinion, nation and‘nationalism have had different meanings
at different times. The concepts of public opinion and nation share a historical

beginning linked to the idea of self-goveming that grew out of the Enlightenment.

 

Public (New York: Basic Books, 1986); John Durham Peters, “Historical Tensions in the Concept of
Public Opinion” in Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent, eds. Theodore L. Glasser and
Charles T. Salmon (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), 3-32. Jurgen Haberrnas, The structural
transformation of the public sphere, trans. T. Burer and F. Lawrence (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT
Press, 1989); Clifford G. Christians, “Propaganda and the Technological System,” in Public Opinion
and the Communication of Consent, eds. Theodore L. Glasser and Charles T. Salmon (New York:
Guilford Press, 1995), 156-174; James W. Carey, “The Press, Public Opinion and Public Discourse,” in
Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent, eds. Theodore L. Glasser and Charles T. Salmon
(New York: Guilford Press, 1995), 373-402.

' Converse, P. “Changing Conceptions,” S13.

9 Other scholars have examined the term public opinion by separating the two words and tracing
them to more remote historical times. Most recently see: Koji Fuse, “Ideological Constraints of Public
Opinion Polls: History, Legitimation, and Effects on Democracy,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (The
University of Texas at Austin, 2000). See also: Slavko Splichal, Public Opinion: Developments and
controversies in the twentieth century (Lanham, Maryland and Oxford, England: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc., 1999)

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Public opinion, no matter how it was defined, could not have existed prior to the break
in which European people no longer were mere subjects but could be conceived by
some as individuals. Nationalism is important to understand because of the political
power it grew to have during the nineteenth century and its link to public opinion.

Slowly, the absolutism of empires was transformed into nation-states as the
models of the French and U. S. revolutions were taken up in other places in various
ways, Cornell University’s Aaron L. Binekorb Professor of International Studies,
Benedict Anderson wrote.l0 By 1914, the concept of nation had become common
sense, and the world could be imagined as naturally divided up among them.

Nation, Race, and Citizen

 

Katherine Verdery’s suggestions about ways to consider nationalism can be
used to incorporate “race” based assumptions from the turn of the century.‘I Verdery
takes “nation” as an operator in a social classification system that establishes grounds
for authority and legitimacy through the categories it makes seem natural. “Nation”
has had many different meanings, and all of them have been used to sort people,
however, the criteria for sorting changes with time and location. The symbol—nation

—links subjects to states and distinguishes between them. According to Verdery,

 

'° Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1995), 47-65; John Hutchinson
and Anthony D. Smith, “Introduction,” in Nationalism eds. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith
(Oxford University Press, 1994), 34.

”Katherine Verdery, “Whither ‘Nation’ and ‘Nationalism’ in Mapping the Nation, Gopal
Balakrishnan ed. (London: Verso, 1996), 226-234.

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nationalism is both the political use of the symbol and the sentiment that draws people
to respond to the symbol. She wrote, “Nationalism is a quintessentially
homogenizing, differentiating, or classifying discourse: one that aims its appeals at
people presumed to have certain things in common as against people thought not to

have any mutual connections.”l2

Nationalism has operated in two major meanings:
citizenship and ethnicity. In the first sense, the nation is a collective sovereignty
involving individual citizens’ political participation. In the second sense, of ethnicity,
the nation is a collective of individuals who share a belief in a common, culture,
history, language , and perhaps other defining material attachments." She pointed out
two ways to imagine the identity in national identity. One meaning is the individual’s .
sense of self as separately having or being a certain type of national. A second
meaning is a particular collective in relation to similar others. Verdery wrote,
“National identity thus exists at two levels: the individual’s sense of self as national,
and the identity of the collective whole in relation to others of like kind.”" There is a
paradox of meaning. The identity in national identity means both the same, identical,

alike and unique, special and only. These meanings can simultaneously work to

homogenize and differentiate."

 

”Verdery, “Whither,” 227.
”Verdery, “Whither,” 227.
l‘Verdery, “Whither,” 229.
lsVerdery, “Whither,” 229.

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R4111: Order by Race

During the nineteenth century, ideas of race and nation became interlinked and
people were thought to be differently abled to govern themselves and to reason, based
on their race. The assertions made in this dissertation regarding race rely primarily on
the scholarship about race conducted by Reginald Horsman, Nell Irvin Painter,
Richard Slotkin and Robert Young.'6 The use by Reginald Horsman of the terms
racialist and racialism are used instead of racist and racism to continually remind the
reader that the nineteenth and early twentieth century understanding of race was much
different than the way the terms are understood today.

A variety of race theories dominated the common sense in popular culture and
some held major ground in academic thinking. The race theories were based on
assumptions about human beings in which they were rank ordered in their ability to
govern themselves. Rank ordered means going from the highest to the lowest, thus
some people were believed to have the greatest ability to reason and govern
themselves and others were believed to have little or no ability to reason and govern
themselves. Those with what was believed to be the highest ability to reason and
govern were thought of as the most civilized. The Constitution of the United States

was thought to be the highest ranked form of government. Civilization was defined by

 

'6 Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of A merican Racial Anglo-Saxonism
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981); Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at
Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1987); Richard
Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of The Frontier in the Age of Industrialization (New York:
HarperPerennial, 1994); and Robert J .C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and
Race (New York: Routledge, 1995).

 

the sophisticated nature of the form of government, and the American form was

Widely perceived as the most advanced and growing out of and improving on a British
model. These racial theories included a hierarchy of qualities that made the Anglo-
Saxon-Teuton people most fit to rule. This common-sense view was reflected by
historians and was apparent in politics, literature, popular periodicals, and schoolbooks
in the United States. Scientists provided legitimacy and credibility for racial theories,
and political debates were waged in racial terms. It was widely assumed that the
Anglo-Saxon-Teuton would eventually replace all inferior races.'7

The label nation-race is used for reference to nation or nationalism that is
understood by any author of an article in the public opinion canon as being a
stratification of human beings in many ways but especially in their ability to reason
and govern themselves. This is an immense simplification, but a useful one for this
study. The stratification of human beings included more than this. A broad-based
cultural understanding of nationality was inflected with racial understanding around
the turn of the twentieth century.
Objective

The objective of this dissertation is to discover the relationship between the
concepts of public opinion and nation in elite academic articles written between 1886

and 1933. In discovering the relationship between the concepts of public opinion and

 

l7Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny; Painter, Standing at Armageddon; Young, Colonial Desire;
Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of The Frontier.

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nation, this dissertation will show what complexities of meaning of the concept of
public opinion was covered over and forgotten when public opinion became widely
understood as poll results. Further, this dissertation will suggest what might it mean
that the multiplicity of conceptions of public opinion were neglected for the dominant
idea of polling as public opinion. This dissertation is important because it contributes
a beginning for a reconsideration of the history of the concept of public opinion, and
provides one alternative, enriched understanding of the changes in the meaning of
public opinion in the early part of the twentieth century.

Analysis of the Syllabus

 

This dissertation analyzed the articles from academic journals and mass
circulation periodicals that formed a portion of a 1934 Princeton University syllabus
for one of the first classes in Public Opinion. A close textual reading of the articles
was performed to understand the authors’ use of, and the relationship between, the
concepts of public opinion and nation. Additionally the authors’ concepts of race,
democracy, the common man, and references to governing were examined as they
related to public opinion and nation. The close reading of the syllabus articles was
completed so that the authors’ assumptions about the concepts of public opinion and
nation, might be compared to the assumptions in the origins story, or received

tradition, of public opinion polling about public opinion and nation, as well as race,

democracy, and the common man.

An “origins story” is the explanation within a group about how the group was
derived. In other words, for any group, an origins story answers questions such as,
“How did we get here?” or “Why do we do what we do now?” It is the group’s
“received tradition,” or the story the members tell themselves, about their shared past.
The terms “origins story” or “received tradition” are used to distinguish the narrative
from a history. While the received tradition of public opinion as polling tells a story
about what happened in the past, it does not tell the story with the methods and
theories that scholars commonly call a history.

In this dissertation, the group is composed of the people in business and
scholars in academe who have been participating in public opinion polling. The
dissertation recounts the origins story the practitioners of public opinion polling have
been telling among themselves, and reviews the criticisms of public opinion as
polling. The mainstream understanding of the received tradition of public Opinion and
polling will be compared to the use of the concepts of public opinion and nation in the
public opinion canon just before what is now called the founding of the field of public
opinion by mainstream academic and business pollsters.

Markers of Public Opinion as Poll Results

 

The articles from the Princeton syllabus form the public opinion canon just
before the time that was frequently claimed in the origins story as the founding of the

field of study of public opinion polling in late1936 and early 1937. In November

1936, pollster George Gallup successfully predicted the election of Franklin Roosevelt
as President of the United States. In January 1937 the prestigious, academic journal.
Public Opinion Quarterly was first published. The term canon is used in its everyday
meaning as forming the standard, accepted knowledge of a field at a specific time.
Thus, the public opinion canon of 1934 is contained in the syllabus of Princeton
political science Professor Harwood Childs.
Harwood Childs, POQ Founder

Childs was one of the most important men in the field of public opinion in its
early years. His immense contribution to the field included co-founding and editing
its leading journal, writing textbooks and histories, and publishing his public opinion
syllabus just as public opinion classes were beginning to be taught in universities.

Childs syllabus’, A Reference Guide to the Study of Public Opinion, was
published as a small book in 1934 with some unspecified type of assistance from
public relations founder Edward Bernays." The syllabus was from one of the first
university classes in public opinion. He wrote a public opinion textbook, An
Introduction to Public Opinion, in 1940. Before publication, he reviewed a
manuscript of The Pulse of Democracy, written by George Gallup and his colleague
Saul Forbes Rae.19 A history of the public opinion field is in Childs’ Public Opinion:
nature, formation, and role written in 1965. Childs proposed, co-founded, and was

one of the first editors of Public Opinion Quarterly. He received financial and staff

 

" Harwood Childs, A Reference Guide to Public Opinion (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1934): dust jacket.

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support from Princeton to publish Public Opinion Quarterly.20 During the early years.
most of the time, the articles were not peer reviewed; however, according to an article
by former Public Opinion Quarterly editor W. Phillips Davison, the lack of peer
review was not a problem because Childs had a comprehensive view of the people
studying public opinion.“

Syllabus as Canon

 

For this dissertation, the articles contained in Childs’ 1934 Princeton public
opinion syllabus are labeled as the public opinion canon before the founding of the
field. His syllabus is different from those commonly in use today in universities.
Childs Syllabus was published as a small book. Spread open, two pages fill an 81/2 x
11 inch piece of paper. Edward L. Bemays introduction to the volume talked about
the necessity of wide dissemination of knowledge. Not surprisingly, Bernarys viewed
public opinion as something to be managed. He wrote, “Professor Harwood L. Childs
has placed under debt to him all those who come in contact with the field of public
opinion management, whether they are students or concerned with practical work.”22
In his introduction, Childs explained that the course followed a logical presentation of
the field. He began with “the phenomenon of opinion management,” moved to means

of dissemination, and then to “strategies and devices used to manage opinion,” and

 

'9 George Gallup and Saul Forbes Rae, The Pulse of Democracy: The Public Opinion Poll and How
it Works (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1940) vii.

2° Harwood Childs, “The First Editor Looks Back,” Public Opinion Quarterly 2] (1957): 7-13.

"W. Phillips Davison, “ A Story of the POQ’s Fifty-year Odyssey,” Public Opinion Quarterly 51
(I987): 88.

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then to the nature of public opinion and how to identify public opinion, then he moved
to “factors and processes that condition public opinion at a given moment and over a
period of time.”23 His emphasis was always on the political, he wrote. The students in
the class were free to select from his twenty-two categories. Childs provided a list of
books and articles for each topic area. There is a great deal of duplication of books
and articles under each topic area. For example, James Bryce’s American
Commonwealth appears in several topic areas.

The articles from Childs’ Princeton syllabus are the primary sources analyzed
in this dissertation. The articles are from academic journals and more widely
circulating periodicals. The earliest article in the syllabus was published in 1886, and
the most recent article in 1933. The articles from Childs’ syllabus form an elite and
influential body of work. Within the norms and practices of the then developing
quantitative social science, these articles were the foundation for the field that would
be built over the ensuing decades. Analysis of these articles provides one way to
begin a partial reconsideration of the history of the concept of public opinion and the
history of the field of public opinion as polling. The completion of the analysis of the
articles in Childs’ syllabus will create an alternative to the learned history of public

opinion and its relationship to nation. The received tradition of public opinion—the

origins story—retold in Chapter Two, summarizes the current mainstream

 

’2 Childs, Reference Guide, iii.
2’ Childs, Reference Guide, 2-3.

12

understanding. The origins story is retold so that it can be compared to the analysis of
the articles in Childs’ syllabus. This retelling relies on several major sources and many
fragments.

Chroniclers of the Received Tradition

 

This received tradition is based on Childs’ history from Public Opinion:
nature, formation, and role; survey researcher Jean Converse’s history of the growth
of survey research, Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence 1890-

1960; and scholar Paul Palmer’s Harvard Ph.D. dissertation from 1934, “The Concept

”2’ Palmer’s dissertation was used by others in

of Public Opinion in Political Theory.
their telling of the history of public opinion. Childs was among those who relied on
Palmer as well as his own experience in the field. Converse gave George Gallup’s

polling fame credit for giving academic researchers a boost. It was a boost they, for
the most part, failed to acknowledge.25 Northwestern University social scientist and

the author of Numbered Voices, Susan Herbst took the mainstream story of public

opinion, contributed to its substance, and then looked at the story using a theoretical

 

2‘ Paul A. Palmer, “The Concept of Public Opinion in Political Theory,” in Essays in History and
Political Theory in Honor of Charles Howard Mcllwain (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1936); Harwood Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, (Princeton,
New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1965); Jean Converse, Survey Research in the United
States: Roots & Emergence 1890-1960 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California
Press, 1987).

2’ Converse, J. Survey Research, 114-116.

13

frame based on the thinking of social theorist Max Weber and power theorist Michel

Foucault. With her long historical view, she associated the changing meanings of

public opinion with changes in technology.”

Analysis of the Articles in the Canon

 

To examine the canon, the articles were collected and photographic copies of
the original articles were made. The articles from Childs’ syllabus, A Reference
Guide to the Study of Public Opinion were placed in chronological order and read. The
156 articles were from academic journals and publications with wider circulation.
Some of the articles were then omitted from firrther analysis. Articles containing
tabulation of student’s opinions, if there was no justification for the process, no
mention of public opinion, nation, race, governing, or democracy were omitted.
Statistical methods articles that proposed ways to construct indices and scales, if they
did not contain any reference to public opinion, nation, race, governing, or democracy.
were omitted. Biographies were omitted. Most of the justifications or criticisms of
lobbying were omitted, unless the argument contained discussions of public opinion or
nation, and so were reports on topics that did not make any reference to public
opinion, nation, race, governing, or democracy. From the total 156 articles, 46 were
included in further analysis.

The articles that comprised Childs’ syllabus showed a reduction in the

discussion of public opinion, nation, race, governing, and democracy and an increase

 

2‘ Susan Herbst, Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995).

14

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in the discussion of statistics as the years passed from 1886 to 1933. Thus, more
articles were omitted from further analysis as the years increased to 1933. This change
in emphasis, resulting in an increasing number of articles having some concern with
statistical analysis, is fully fitting with the changes in social science generally and the
stature and position Childs held in the political science and public opinion field. He
was one of the advocates of bringing statistical analysis to the study of public opinion.
His stature in the field today, dominated as it is by numerical thinking, has been
created, in part, by his advocacy of the victorious approach of statistical analysis.

Mindful of the public opinion origins story, nationalism, and race theory,
various conceptions of the time period, and semiotics, this researcher read the articles
looking for the overt use of the key concepts and the unstated assumptions revealed in
the text about the key concepts.
Why look at the canon of public opinion in 1934

This study, aimed at discovering the relationship between the concepts of
public opinion and nation between 1886 and 1933 in the public opinion canon, was
prompted by the observation of a contradiction. There was a fundamental
contradiction between the way the nature of human beings was represented in the
received tradition of public opinion polling and work by cultural studies scholars.

Polling advocates associated their endeavor with democracy and celebrated the

15

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wisdom of the common man. Cultural studies scholars focusing on race revealed a
rank ordering of human beings.

If it is axiomatic that human beings are ordered by rank based on their nation-
race, and that rank order determines their degree of ability to govern themselves—and
it was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—then it is not possible to
argue that the common man is wise unless all of the people are of the same nation-
race. Neither does it make sense to argue that public opinion polls, or journalism, can
further democratic participation because the argument relied on roughly equal, and all
reasoning, individuals fit to govern themselves.

Looking at the articles in Childs’ syllabus through the lens of assumptions that
existed about nation-race at the time the articles were published should make it
possible to see the relationship between the concept of nation-race and the concept of
public opinion.

Looking at the articles though a social science lens provides an alternative
view. Social science standards of practice require incorporation or refutation of
previous work. From a social science perspective, it should be possible to find in the
public opinion canon the foundation of the ideas about public opinion polling that
were to become pollings’ common sense, the connection between the wise common
man, polling, and democracy.

This dissertation reveals the complexity of the relationship between the

16

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concepts of public opinion and nation as the concepts are used in elite academic
articles from the periodicals that formed the public opinion cannon in 1934.

Of course, the whole story has not been, and could not be, told about the
concept of public opinion. Not because the field is so immense, but because no
history is complete. It is this researcher’s h0pe that by singling out the topic of the
meaning of public opinion in relation to nation for analysis, the common-sense
understanding of public opinion as poll results and polls as serving democracy might
be slightly dislodged, thus making it possible to think about alternative ways of
understanding public opinion.

Chapter Two: The received tradition

 

The mainstream origins story of public opinion and polling is reviewed in
chapter two. This is the history as it was told by and to the people in the public
opinion field. This version of the history of public opinion—the received tradition—
and polling relies on several major sources and many fragments. It is based on Childs’
history from Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role; Jean Converse’s history of

the growth of survey research, Survey Research in the United States: Roots and

Emergence 1890- 1960; and Paul Palmer’s Harvard Ph.D. dissertation from 1934,

17

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“The Concept of Public Opinion in Political Theory. The history is
reviewed in order to display their thinking about what they did and from where they
came. It is their origins story. Just as their definition of public opinion has a firm hold
on common-sense understanding, the history they wrote is the mainstream history of
the field. The received tradition is presented in order in order to use it as a foundation.
It is against this foundation that the meanings of the articles in the public opinion
canon will be compared. Additionally, important critics of the current common-sense
understanding of public opinion as poll results also are reviewed.
Chapter Three: Nation and Nationalism

A synthesis of theories of nationalism and theories of race are described in
chapter three. Nationalism is important to understand because of the political power it
grew to have during the nineteenth century and because of its link to public opinion.
Chapter three provides the necessary foundation to fully understand that ideas of race
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were quite different from what they
are today. Nation and race were overlapping terms in the period from 1886 to 1933.
Understanding nation and race allows for a richer understanding of public opinion.

Chapters Four and Five: The Articles

The articles from Childs’ Princeton syllabus are the primary sources analyzed

 

2’ Paul A. Palmer, “The Concept of Public Opinion in Political Theory,” in Essays in History and
Political Theory in Honor of Charles Howard Mcllwain (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1936); Harwood Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, (Princeton,
New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1965); Jean Converse, Survey Research in the United
States: Roots & Emergence 1890-1960 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California
Press, 1987.

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in this dissertation. These articles comprising the public opinion canon before the
time most often understood as the founding of the field of study—l 93 6/ 1 93 7—and
Gallup’s subsequent, successful promotion of polling as public opinion are analyzed
chronologically in chapters four and five. The earliest article in the syllabus was
published in 1886, and the most recent article was published in 1933. The articles are
quoted generously: The researcher intends for the voices of the authors and their
understandings to be directly available to the reader.

Chapter Six: Conclusions

 

The dissertation contributes a richer understanding of the concepts of nation
and public opinion as the concepts are used by the authors of the articles in the public
opinion canon. These elite men, for the most part, thought of the world as comprised
of human beings stratified by their race in their ability to govern themselves. The
concept nation was used interchangeably with race. Because humans were stratified
by nation-race, the common man was not thought of as wise but rather he was thought
of as dangerous. The contest over the definition of public opinion is revealed.

While journalism may take its justification from serving the polity by
informing all citizens, the press has not always been thought of as contributing to this
mission. This research shows that the idea of a dangerous, unreasoning common man
was in wide circulation in elite publications and academic publications and thus must
have been widely understood as commonsense among elite persons who read and
wrote the articles. The received tradition of public opinion and polling has covered

over the shift in the understanding of the common person.

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Since nation and race are seen to overlap in meaning, it is important to note
that the use of a nationality only to refer to individuals, covers over the understanding
of nation as race. The received tradition of public opinion as polling, which tells a
progress story of the development of polling is found to be, in part, at odds with these
findings. Instead of progress toward consensus, there is a wide diversity of points of
view about what constitutes public opinion.

Further, it is shown that the idea of public opinion as poll results could not
have sprung full-blown from George Gallup’s imagination. The foundation for polling
is there in the canon where election results are discussed as equivalent to public
opinion, or as one way to measure public opinion.

Democracy is discussed in the articles in the canon. However, for democracy
to work, the few need to lead the many because most people are irrational or easily
led. What Gallup seems to have invented is the link between the argument for the
wisdom of the common man and polling; how polls make the voice of the common
man heard, and thus serve democracy. He may have taken the justification for the
freedom of the press—to inform citizens so that they might participate in governing
themselves—and applied the same logic to the measurement of individual opinions on
social issues in polls. However, there is no public opinion social science foundation

for his argument in 1933 or earlier.

20

This dissertation only begins to open to understanding the received tradition of
public opinion and polling. Future scholars may wish to look at the concept of public
opinion in a wide range of publications. They could discover the way the term is used
in context before 1936 in government documents, newspaper editorials, or university
textbooks, for example.

If in 1933 the common man was dangerous in part because of his nation-race,
when did the idea of a wise common man triumph in academic writing or the mass
circulation press about public opinion?

The individuals who led the emerging field of public opinion would all be

excellent subjects for biographies.

21

Chapter Two:

The Received Tradition of the Concept of Public Opinion

Chapter two presents the conception of public opinion that is generally
understood and repeated today by public opinion polling practitioners in business and
the academy. It is called the “received tradition” because it is the commonly held
knowledge of the background of the field of public opinion as told primarily by three
scholars; Paul Palmer, Harwood Childs and Jean Converse. Within the presentation of
the received tradition, chapter two presents a review of the major literature of the
history of the concept of public opinion. Additionally this chapter includes a review
of the work of the scholars who challenged the definition of the concept of public
opinion as poll results.

Introduction to the Received Tradition

The history of public opinion and polling has been told in fragments, and the
concept of public opinion has changed meaning over time. In past times authors have
used the term public opinion with many meanings different from poll results. The
stories of public opinion and polling sometimes included links between the shifting
meaning of the concept and the current practice of public opinion polling. Today the
most widespread understanding of public opinion is polling, and polling is understood

as an aggregation of individual opinions. Public opinion now is conceived as a

22

reflection of what the public thinks about public issues, and poll results are widely

seen as a way for citizens to communicate their views to government.l

Only one attempt at a comprehensive historical treatment of “public opinion”
exists: Paul A. Palmer’s The Concept of Public Opinion in Political Theory, an
unpublished Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard in 1934. Palmer pointed out that historians
of political theory have ignored public opinion. He wrote, “American scholars, with
but few exceptions, appear to believe that the treatises of [A. Lawrence] Lowell and of
[Walter] Lippmann are at once the first and the last word on the subject. It is time to
dispel this parochial, unhistorical illusion.”2

Harwood Childs, a Princeton political science professor and founder of Public
Opinion Quarterly, wrote Public Opinion: Nature Formation and Role in 1965. Part
of the book retells the history of public opinion. Childs relied on Palmer’s history.

For the portion of Childs’ history of public opinion that does not rely on Palmer,

 

'Charles T. Salmon and Theodore L. Glasser, “The Politics of Polling and the Limits of Consent,” in
Theodore L. Glasser and Charles T. Salmon eds. Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent,
(New York: Guilford, 1995).

2Paul A. Palmer, “The Concept of Public Opinion in Political Theory,” in Essays in History and
Political Theory in Honor of Charles Howard Mcllwain (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1936), 23]. Palmer referred to A. Lawrence Lowell and Walter Lippmann because
they were the biggest names dealing with the concept of public opinion at the time. Lowell’s position
was that a few of the elite should lead the many. Lippmann’s position was that an educated elite of
specialists should lead the many. Both Lippmann and Lowell held anti-democratic positions.
Additionally, Palmer pointed out that Harwood Childs relied exclusively on sources written in English
for his Reference Guide to Public Opinion. He commended Harold Lasswell for using French and
German sources effectively. The major analytical work of Lasswell’s that Palmer recommends,
Propaganda Technique in the World War deals with the topic entirely from a control perspective.
Other scholars have traced the background of the two words - public and opinion — to earlier times,
however, my concern is primarily with the transition of the concepts of public opinion to the concept of
public opinion as poll results.

23

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Childs appears to have relied on his own life in the field of academic public opinion
research. Childs told the story as the concept of public opinion progressing to the
current dominant meaning of public opinion meaning poll results.

Jean Converse, a University of Michigan professor and survey researcher,
wrote a history of survey research that placed public opinion polling as a precursor to
academic survey research. Converse made a convincing case for the connections
between marketing, advertising, and public opinion polling. She folded the history of
public opinion polling into a chronology of the development of survey research. She
presented a story of progress in which early public opinion polling contributed to the
development of survey research. However, she did not address the multiple meanings
of public opinion before 1936.

Supplemented by additional fragments from others who have used the history
of public opinion, this account of the commonly understood “received tradition” relies
on Palmer, Childs, and Converse. The received tradition is presented to review what
is generally understood within the field about its origins.

Commonly, the story starts in the eighteenth century with the term public
opinion, its popularization, and the debates surrounding the concept during the
nineteenth century. As the story moves to the early decades of the twentieth century,
scholars from multiple fields engaged the concept of public Opinion. The story then
joins the polling industry and the journal Public Opinion Quarterly. In telling this

story of the concepts of public opinion, it is sometimes necessary to take brief side

24

trips in order to explain the changing definitions of key terms. Many of the concepts
we use today as if they were axiomatic have had a range of different meanings in the
past.
Eighteenth Century Beginnings

This section presents a brief overview of the emergence and spread of the
concept of public opinion from the middle of the eighteenth century through the late
nineteenth century.

The origins of the concept of public opinion—as something that came from
people outside of the monarchy, who did not belong to the aristocratic ruling class, but

had a desire to alter the monarchy’s policies—was traced back to eighteenth-century,
pre-revolutionary France during the reign of Louis XVI, 1774-92.3 The concept
referred to an able few who were not by birth involved in government.4 A widespread
recognition existed “of the divine, mysterious origin and validity of opinion’” by the

middle of the eighteenth century. Near the end of the eighteenth century, the general

 

’Paul A. Palmer, “The Concept of Public Opinion in Political Theory,” in Reader in Public Opinion
and Communication, eds. Bernard Berelson and Morris Janowitz (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press,
1953), 3; Hans Speier, “Historical Development of Public Opinion,” American Journal of Sociology 55
(1950): 377; Paul F. Lazarsfeld, “Public Opinion and the Classical Tradition,” Public Opinion
Quarterly, 21 (1957): 39; Harold D. Lasswell, “The Impact of Public Opinion Research On Our
Society,” Public Opinion Quarterly 21 (1957): 33-38; Susan Herbst, Numbered Voices: How Opinion
Polling Has Shaped American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 53-55.

‘Herbst, Numbered Voices, 55; Vincent Price, Communication Concepts 4: Public Opinion
(Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1992), 11; Keith M. Baker, “Public Opinion as a Political
Invention,” in Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth
Century (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 167-199; Marie Ozouf,
“‘Public Opinion’ at the End of the Old Regime,” Journal of Modern History 60 (1988): S6-7, 81 1-12.

sPalmer, “The Concept of Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 4.

25

assumptions in political literature were that public opinion was created by the

enlightened few and was a potent social force that could bring on revolution or make a

politician a success.6 It was “the chief check on the holders of power.”7 Hans Speier
of the Rand Corporation wrote that public opinion was, at that time, “opinions on

matters of concern to the nation freely and publicly expressed by men outside the

government.”8 Speier wrote that public opinion came into existence, along with the

rise of the middle class, as printing and literacy expanded and democratic political

institutions were being established.9 These would have continued to be an elite few.
The vast majority of people living in what is today called France would have been
peasants.m

Jean-Jacques Rousseau coined the term l’opinion publique, but Jacques Necker
was credited with popularizing it in the 17805. As the French court’s minister of
finance, Necker pushed the crown to publish financial accounts. Necker hoped

thereby to appease creditors and pacify the public opinion of those few who had lent

money to the court of Louis XV I.n In writings from 1773 to 1804, Necker analyzed

public opinion as a factor in governing and thought of public opinion as something

 

“Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 7.

7Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 7.

'Spier, “Historical Development,” 376.

9Spier, “Historical Development,” 379; Lazarsfeld, “Public Opinion and the Classical Tradition,” 39,
41; Harwood Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, (Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van
Nostrand Company, Inc., 1965), 27.

'° Harvey Chisick, The Limits of Reform in the Enlightenment: Attitudes toward the Education of the
Lower Classes in Eighteenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981) 5.

26

coming from an elite few. He was primarily concerned with the opinion of an elite
bourgeoisie, which included the people visiting his wife’s salon. Salons were places,
usually private homes, where the elite bourgeoisie gathered to discuss ideas that might
later become essays or books.'2 Necker’s analysis placed various types of govemment
in relation to public opinion. For example, he declared that public opinion did not
exist under a despot. While in a republic, he argued, men feel so strongly about the
independence of their individual opinions that it is difficult for public opinion to arise.
He saw no distinctive character of public Opinion in a democracy, and he thought a

limited monarchy was the type of government under which public opinion was

effective and wholesome in its influence on a governing monarch.l3 A limited
monarchy referred to a monarch that was not an absolute monarch. An absolute
monarch would rule without being questioned because his or her power came directly
from God. A limited monarchy could take many forms, in each there would be some
form of control or influence on decisions made by the monarch. The argument over
form of monarchy continued in Western Europe through the period between the world
wars.

Following the French Revolution of 1789, public opinion was discussed in

 

”Childs, “Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role,” 27; Speier, “Historical Development,” 379;
Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 5.

'2 Herbst, “Numbered Voices,” 53-57; and Speier, “Historical Development,” 381-3 82. However, as
Kurt W. Back points out in “Metaphors for Public Opinion in Literature,” the elite of the period were
conflicted about the ideal citizen in theory and the mobs they saw in the streets, in Public Opinion
Quarterly 52 (1988): 284.

”Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 5-6.

27

Germany and England as ideas sparked by the Revolution spread. As Childs wrote.

the framers of the US. Constitution would have been aware of these writings.l4 They

were participants in the discussion of Enlightenment ideals. German theorists nearly

always acknowledged their debt to the writers of the French Revolution.15
During the early decades of the nineteenth century the debate about the nature

of public opinion was concerned with the degree of virtue and competence of public

opinion."5 Englishman Jeremy Bentham asked that all official acts be made public and
saw an enlightened public opinion uniting the wisdom in the nation. Writing at a time
when monarchy still maintained control, he thought public opinion was a cure for
misrule by a government. Without explaining specifically how it would work,
Bentham believed a public opinion tribunal in a representative democracy supported
democracy and should be considered a law from the people. A law from the people
was a natural law and an alternative to a law that came from God through the
monarchy. He said that the dictates of public opinion coincided with the principle of

greatest happiness, and he thought the newspaper was the most important factor in

forming and expressing public opinion.'7 Still these thinkers conceived of public

opinion as located among an elite because the lower orders were incapable of reason.

 

I“Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 28.
l’Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 7.
l"Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 28.
I"Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 7-8.

28

l ‘ ”‘ Ash

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I:

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click]:

C1133“

Within the discussion concerning the competence of public opinion, supporters
of democracy usually argued for its virtue as protection against misrule and an agent

of progress. Critics of democracy were suspicious of public opinion and thought it

should be limited by the state."3 The debate was that public opinion might be a force

for salvation emerging from the enlightened middle class or it could be dangerous and
in need of control.19 Either way, by 1825, according to Palmer, “the concept of public

opinion had entered the main current of political theory.”20 Supporters and critics of

democracy discussed the role of the press in the formation and expression of public

opinion.21 Elites would have written and read the debate in newspapers. In the United
States, it would have been a part of the discussion of extending suffrage.

Within each of these discussions of public opinion, the concept was not
extended to include everyone. Speier wrote, “In nineteenth century Europe public
opinion was a synonym of opinions expressed by the political representatives of the

electorate, by newspapers and by prominent members or organizations of the middle
class.”22

There had been shifis in the meaning of the term public opinion from the time

it emerged in the eighteenth century just before the French Revolution; however,

 

"Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 9.
I"Price, Communication Concepts 4,” 15.

20Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 9.
2|Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 9.

29

public opinion continued to mean the views of some subset of elites and did not mean
all of the people.

James Bryce and an expansion of interest in Public Opinion

 

At the end of the nineteenth-century a book by an internationally known

historian marked a turning point in the history of public opinion because many

scholars consider it the first forrnualtion of public opinion as an aggregate.23 The
American Commonwealth was written by James Bryce and published in New York
and London in 1888 and into the early decades of the 1900s. Because of Bryce’s

description of one man forming an opinion, Harwood Childs called the book, “one of

the most remarkable treatments of public opinion,”24 and for the same reason he

believed one section of the book—the public opinion chapters—was still valuable

reading in 1965.25

One cannot overstate the importance of James Bryce to the people who would
later write about the concept of public opinion as poll results. Pollster George Gallup
wrote, “Those of us who launched this effort to measure public opinion by sampling

methods did not regard public opinion as a mysterious force which manifested itself in

 

22Speier, “Historical Development,” 385.

23Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 29-30; George Gallup and Saul F. Rae, The
Pulse of Democracy: The Public Opinion Poll and How it Works (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1940),]6-33; George Gallup, “The Changing Climate for Public Opinion Research,” Public Opinion
Quarterly, 21 (1957): 23; Herbst, Numbered Voices, 59; L. John Martin, “The Genealogy of Public
Opinion Polling,” The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 472 (1984):
15; Albert E. Gollin, “In Search of a Useable Past,” Public Opinion Quarterly 49 (1985): 416.

24Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 29.

25Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 29-30.

30

.nli
I l
A
. .1. L

unknown ways. To us, as to James Bryce, public opinion was the ‘aggregate of the

. . . . ”,26
vrews men hold regardrng matters that affect or interest the community. Paul

Lazarsfeld, an influential communication scholar, called Bryce the patron saint of

modern public opinion research.27 Bryce has been widely credited with suggesting

public opinion was an aggregate that could be measured in a way similar to one-

person, one-vote as one-person, one-opinion.28 Writing in 1984, John L. Martin said

the now commonsense understanding of public opinion began around the turn of the

century."

In Western European discussions of democracy, the tyranny of the majority
had been part of the discussion of democracy during the nineteenth century. Some
thinkers were concerned that if political issues were decided by a majority then the
minority points of view would be silenced. Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in

America, written in 1835, is the classic work expressing this concern. He worried

 

26Gallup, “Changing Climate,” 23.

2"Paul F. Lazarsfeld, “The Obligations of the 1950 Pollster to the 1984 Historian” Public Opinion
Quarterly 14 (1950): 617-638.

2'Hcrbst, Numbered Voices, 59; Gollin, “Useable Fast,” 416; Childs, Public Opinion: nature,
formation, and role, 29; Gallup, “Changing Climate,” 23; Gallup and Rae, Pulse of Democracy, 16;
John Ranney, “Do The Polls Serve Democracy? Public Opinion Quarterly, 10 (1946): 351. Susan
Herbst has a more complex understanding of Bryce and his understanding of public opinion. Further,
in her book Reading Public Opinion: How political actors view the democratic process(Chicago and
London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), Herbst claims Bryce understood public opinion as a
group phenomenon. However, she gives no justification for this change from the usual understanding
of Bryce as advocating public opinion as an aggregate. On page 6 and page 61 she places Bryce with
other scholars who understood public opinion to be something associated with groups.

2"Martin, “Genealogy,”15.

31

‘71

in

It;

about subtle working of oppression of minority views rather than brute suppression of
minority views.30

To understand how broadly the concept of public opinion would be stretched,
it is important to have an idea of the different ways the term began to be used. What
had been primarily the domain of those who wrote about politics and governments was
broadened around the turn of the century to include sociologists and social
psychologists. Some of them focused primarily on the emotional and irrational nature
of public opinion. For example, Gabrielle Tarde’s Opinion and the Crowd, published

in 1901 in French and Graham Wallas’ Human Nature in Politics in 1909, both had as

their topics the non-rational, emotional factors at work in public opinion.” Tarde’s

The Laws of Imitation in 1890 and Gustov LeBon’s The Crowd in 1895, explored

“imitative behavior and emotional ‘contagion’ in crowds.”32 Other scholars examined
the role organized groups play in public opinion. Arthur F. Bentley’s The Process of
Government in 1908 was seen as a precursor to the study of pressure groups in relation
to public opinion and policy.33 Bentley was critical of Dicey’s Law and Public

Opinion for its lack of precision, and that Bentley wanted to measure public opinion in

terms of groups contributing to its formation.34

 

’° Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J.P. Mayer (New York: Perennial Library,
1988), 61 -70.

"Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 30-31; Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political
Theory,” 11-12.

32Price, Communication Concepts 4, 15.

”Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 31.

34Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 11.

32

The Early Decades of the Twentieth Century

 

More scholars joined the discussion. The study of public opinion had been
dominated by political writers, but social scientists were beginning to look at the
concept. Journalists began to look at the press as an opinion molder and mirror.

Advertising agencies had come of age. Public relations and press agents worked to
create opinion, while the field of marketing was just beginning.35

Developments in other fields in the early years of the twentieth century would
later contribute to defining the concept of public opinion more precisely and
eventually lead to the individual-based quantified definition that is now the
mainstream view, according to Childs and Converse. Social surveys,36 marketing and
advertising}7 educational testing and measurement,38 customer surveys and reader

interest studies39 and the straw polls from the nineteenth century—especially the one

begun in 1916 by the Literary Digest to predict election resultsw—would all provide
foundational work for public opinion pollsters, Childs, Converse and Herbst wrote.

As Childs wrote, these developments must be kept in mind, “to understand the

 

3’Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, p. 31.

3"Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 69; Jean Converse, Survey Research in the
United States: Roots & Emergence 1890-1960 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of
California Press, 1987): 11-53.

”Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 70; Converse, Survey Research, 87-127.

3'Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 71.

3"Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 33; Converse, Survey Research, 87-127.

”Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 70; Converse, Survey Research, 111-127; -
Herbst, Numbered Voices, 69-87.

33

|’/

confluence of factors which produced nation-wide polls?“

Nineteenth Century Straw Polls Continue into the Twentieth Century
During much of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, newspapers and

other periodicals published pre-election straw polls conducted by readers, politicians,

party workers and journalists.42 The Literary Digest began in 1916 and continued for
two decades to ask its readers across the United States how they would vote in

presidential primaries and elections and how they felt about prohibition, bonus

legislation and other policy issues.43 It was elections, however, that were the ongoing
focus of straw polls. A person—other than a journalist as well as journalists—might

be at an event before an election and tell the newspaper how many people there
supported each of the candidates.44 The information in the straw vote exclusively
concerned who people questioned favored in the upcoming election.45 A journalist
might conduct a straw poll of passengers on a commuter train,”5 and straw polls were

given to and taken by people in stores, students on campus, and workers in factories.47

Jean Converse believed newspapers published straw polls to feed on the excitement of

 

"Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 71.

42Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 70; Herbst, Numbered Voices, 69. There were
slightly different forms of straw polls. Generally a straw poll consisted of any group of people being
asked about their voting intentions. It was called a straw vote to distinguish it from an actual vote and
might also be about a policy issue.

”Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 70.

“Herbst, Numbered Voices, 69-70.

"Herbst, Numbered Voices, 77.

“Herbst, Numbered Voices, 76.

"Herbst, Numbered Voices, 79.

34

political campaigns and increase circulation.48 The increase in polls taken by
professional polling organizations seems to have reduced the use of straw polls by
newspapers, according to Herbst. She described the change, “Although straws
conducted by common citizens were extremely popular from the mid-nineteenth

century through the first two decades of the twentieth, they no longer appeared after
the 19305.”49 Many public opinion polling accounts view the straw poll as the

immediate, and sometimes exclusive, precursor to current public opinion polls.50

Before continuing with the chronological account of the received tradition of
public opinion and polling, it is necessary to briefly explain the background of some of
the concepts that have come to be commonplace in the study of public opinion and
social science research generally. These terms—social survey, survey research, and
sampling—have all gone through changes in understanding during the last century.
Social survey, the frrst considered, is no longer in common use.

Social Surveys

 

Stimulated by a variety of motives, and frequently aiming at improving some
social condition, efforts to collect information about large numbers of people began in

the United States and in England before the turn of the century and continued into the

early 19205.5l As Jean Converse wrote,

 

“Converse, Survey Research, 88.

”Herbst, Numbered Voices, 83.

”Converse, Survey Research, 116-117; Herbst, Numbered Voices, 69.
"Converse, Survey Research, 13.

35

The English social survey and its American counterpart were the ‘factualizing’
branch of a broad social movement that spanned the Atlantic roughly from the
18805 to World War I. In late Victorian England, a congeries of wealthy
philanthropists, charity workers, Marxists, single-taxers, trade unionists,
Fabian socialists, liberals, workers of the new settlement houses, physicians
and health workers, evangelists of the new Salvation Army all reflected their
various concerns about the plight of the poor and fear of their revolutionary

threat. Solutions were cast in fervent programs for Christian evangelism and in

fervent debate about the rival prescriptions of capitalism and socialism.52
Those involved collected information in the communities and talked to people to
obtain an overview of a specific problem as it existed in specific areas. They gathered

a huge amount of detail based on individual cases. Sometimes they summarized the

detail by counting cases?3 Converse wrote that these were the characteristics that

would be shared by, “the American survey research that took shape thirty to forty

years later.”54

Schools, housing, crime, nutrition, sanitation, and recreation might be studied
separately or in combinations. The aim was to change the way people thought and
behaved. The professionals involved, often social workers, believed the people who

lived in the commmrity should participate in the study. It was thought that by their

 

”Converse, Survey Research, 13.
s3Converse, Survey Research, 21.
“Converse, Survey Research, 21.

36

participation in gathering information and publicizing findings about problems, people
would be motivated to change themselves and show others how to change.” The

Pittsburgh Survey in 1909, directed by Paul Kellogg, was one of the first of the social

surveys intended as community reform.56 In the 19105 and 19205, agriculture

scientists in colleges and experiment stations gathered survey data in an effort to
“sustain the rural community and improve farm life?”7 By the 19205, the idea of a

survey of the whole population was widespread.58 The term “survey,” however, would
not come to have a fixed meaning for several decades.
S_urvex

The term “survey” was used to refer to many different activities at different
times during the early decades of the twentieth century, and it is important to be aware
of the shifting meaning of the idea. At any particular time and depending on who was
using the term it held changing meanings.”

Indeed, the term “survey” was not used with precision by social researchers

 

SSConverse, Survey Research, 25.

“Converse, Survey Research, 25; Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 69.

57Converse, Survey Research, 26.

s'Converse, Survey Research, 28.

’9 The Oxford English Dictionary puts the roots of survey in the 14'“ century as an examination or
inspection. In the 1920s survey could mean something similar to current meaning. “A systematic
collection and analysis of the attitudes, living conditions, opinions, etc., of a population, usually taken
from a representative sample of the later; freq=poll.” 309, OED dates poll from the l 1‘h century
meaning head and common everywhere. 36. Poll was short for poll tax from 1684 to 1884, and poll
meant the counting of votes in 1625 and the numerical result of voting in 1853. The OED credits
Gallup with, “A poll taken to estimate public opinion on a specific issue by questioning a sample
intended to be representative of the whole people. 37.

37

working under the Franklin Roosevelt administration throughout the 19305 and into

the 19405.60 Into the 19305, the word “survey” might be used to mean a review of

existing records, new information collected on a questionnaire or in an interview, or a

combination of methods.“ A reference to a survey did not necessarily imply any sort
of sample. A survey might include a reference to research in general, so there could be
survey research, a survey study, and a survey investigation. Survey might also refer to
various ways of gathering information. It might refer to aggregated data in existing
records or to individual data from the field. Additionally, survey could mean a
preliminary overview of either the social or the physical environment of a community,

or both. Survey also might refer to specific information about individuals written on

separate cards.62 It was only after the widespread use of probability theory, that survey
came to have its current commonsense meaning in social science research as gathering

data from a random sample of individual respondents either by mail, telephone or in

person, and it only began to take on the current meaning in the late 19305.63 Sampling
is the final term explored in this chapter. However, it is important to note these
changes in the way scholars used the term sampling because meaning is time bound,

even in social science.

Sampling

 

60Converse, Survey Research, 38-39.

"Converse, Survey Research, 428-429, n. 100. While there are still multiple uses of the word survey
today (such as a survey class which looks broadly at a field), within social science research the term has
now lost the broad range of meanings it once had for those organizing information.

62Converse, Survey Research, 39.

"Converse, Survey Research, 41.

38

Today the term “sampling,” if it is unqualified, is most likely to mean a
random sample based on probability theory. The term sampling might be qualified by
the terms quota or random. Today, social scientists, market researchers, and pollsters
use a randomly drawn number of a specific population in order to make
generalizations to the entire population and to estimate error.“ There was, however,
no widespread consensus on using a random sample based on probability theory in

1936 and the value of using a random sample was not taken for granted in the late

1950s, the way it is today.65 Those who work in the public opinion field mark 1948 as
the year when quota sampling fell into disrepute, and quota sampling was blamed for
the incorrect prediction that Harry S Truman would loose the presidential election.”

It took several decades for random samples to replace purposive samples as the
standard for social scientists in ruriversities and government.67 Purposive samples are
samples, or groups of individuals or things, selected because of some shared
characteristic.

Early market researchers used a variety of ways to contact their customers.

The Chicago Tribune sent out questionnaires in 1913 to find out why people bought

 

6‘ When social scientists conduct survey research or polls, first they must determine a universe about
which they wish to make predictions. For example, during an election the universe might consist of all
registered voters. Scientists then devise a method by which the are able to randomly select a portion of
all registered voters. That portion is called a sample. Based on probability theory, the scientist can
then predict what all of the voters will do based on what the members of the sample say they will do.

“Frederick F. Stephan, “Advances in Survey Methods and Measurement Techniques” Public
Opinion Quarterly, 21 (1957): 79-90.

6" Charles W. Roll and Albert H. Cantril, Polls: Their Use and Misuse in Politics, Cabin John,
Maryland: Seven Locks Press, 1980, 66-67; Moore, Superpollsters, 70-71.

‘7 Converse, Survey Research, 90.

.39

certain food items.68 A Milwaukee paper, beginning in 1922, annually selected every

third house to study consumer purchases.“ An early market researcher who would
later become famous for predicting Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 election victory,

Archibald Crossley, did telephone interviews of radio listeners for advertisers in the

early 19305.70 Market researchers used a range of ways to select people to represent
the larger population, including selecting groups of people who were questioned
several times, selecting areas by income level, and selecting homes based on income;

as they worked on various kinds of quota samples that could be repeated in several

cities.71 Quota sampling involves drawing the same number of representatives from
groupings with the shared characteristics. Market researchers were working out ways
to select samples, not probability samples, well before researchers in other fields.
They hoped that by asking a few selected people questions, they would be able to
predict what all of the people who were similar to those selected would say or do.

In 1926, Crossley opened his own market research firm with offices in New

York City and Princeton, New Jersey, and by 1936, he used interviews of a national

sample of about 30,000 people every two weeks.72 In 1924, Henry A. Wallace was

among the founders of the Statistical Laboratory at Iowa State University. The lab

 

“Converse, Survey Research. 90.
“Converse, Survey Research, 90.
”Converse, Survey Research, 90.
"Converse, Survey Research. 91-93.
72Converse, Survey Research, 112.

40

[.34-

applied the area sampling of agriculture to peOple. As Converse described, “Area

sampling of human populations assumed that people could be sampled in something of

the same fashion by associating each person with a unique space or area.”73 In 193 5-
36, when Wallace was Secretary of Agriculture, he set up an interviewing office. His

plan was to interview farmers to discover how they might be persuaded to c00perate

with government programs.74 Even in 1935, however, among those using

sophisticated statistical methods, the purposive selection had not yet been replaced by

random selection of samples.” United States federal government agencies began
using probability sampling for research that included the entire nation by the late

19305, and only in the 19405 did government social scientists push for probability
sampling.76 There had been little criticism of quota sampling until the middle of the
19405.77 The government scientists pushed for probability sampling because they
believed it would provide more accurate predictions. Businesses were looking for

ways to use the emerging social sciences to sell products.

Advertising and Marketing

 

Businesses and advertisers began looking for ways to test advertising messages

 

”Converse, Survey Research, 46.
"Converse, Survey Research, 50.
”Converse, Survey Research, 48.
1"Converse, Survey Research, 94.
T"Converse, Survey Research, 124.

41

and also discover what consumers wanted. This led them to begin questioning

customers in the early years of the twentieth century, around the time that specialized

marketing research agencies were first seen.78 The men who would become famous as
pollsters by correctly predicting the result of the 1936 presidential election had

extensive backgrounds in market research and were more involved with market

research than with polling for most of their lives.79 The method of the 1936 polls had

been developed in market research based in business, psychology, economics and
statistics.80 Early consumer research tried to find out if advertising was prompting

people to buy.8| Converse wrote,
The earliest consumer research focused on consumer’s reactions to products
and to advertising, especially advertising in magazines, newspapers and
billboards, and direct mail. Leading publishing houses undertook research to

demonstrate to their potential advertisers who and where their readership was

and what products these readers would be likely to buy.82
The professionalization of advertising and marketing in the early years of the
century is apparent from early academic status and the flourishing of associations and

journals.

 

7'Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 70.

79Converse, Survey Research, 87. As early as the 18905 research on consumer preferences was
under way.

”Converse, Survey Research, 87.

"Converse, Survey Research, 90.

”Converse, Survey Research, 90.

42

The Association of National Advertisers was formed in 1910. The Audit
Bureau of Circulation was formed in 1914. The American Association of Advertising
Agencies was created in 1917. Also in 1917, the Journal of Applied Psychology began
publishing articles using consumer research data from surveys and experiments on
topics including industrial psychology, counseling, and vocational and mental
testing.83

Harvard University founded its Graduate School of Business and established

the Bureau of Business Research in 1911. The school was involved in work on the
psychological aspects of market research.84 Consumer researcher Paul T. Cherington

taught at Harvard from 1916 until 1919.85 Cherington followed Walter Dill Scott as
president of an organization of advertising professionals and marketing teachers

formed in 1915. The organization would become the American Marketing
Association and publish the Journal of Marketing.86 In 1934, Cherington would

become partners with Elmo Roper in a market research company.87
World War I provided an opportunity for psychologists to try out the testing
tools on which they had been working. They had developed scholastic and vocational

aptitude, reading ability, and intelligence tests. Soldiers were tested in large

 

”Converse, Survey Research, 90.
“Converse, Survey Research, 89.
”Converse, Survey Research, 89.
“Converse, Survey Research, 89-90.
r'Converse, Survey Research, 1 13-1 14.

43

.'3’:

Ar‘h

0—,,
‘5 DOA.

Eton-u

mill in -.

lg;§

numbers.88 While the processing of soldiers allowed psychologists to practice their
methods on large numbers of people, the larger experience of the war increased an

emphasis on the non-rational, on the manipulation of public Opinion, and promoted

widespread skepticism about democracy and the competence of public opinion.89 For
example, George Creel and others bragged about their success in manipulating the
opinions of many people in the United States and Europe. Traditional democratic
theory was attacked by Walter Lippmann. He argued that all individual citizens were
not capable or lacked the resources to participate in governing as demanded by
traditional direct democracy theories. The successful manipulation of public opinion
during the war caused many to feel that public opinion was in need of control by
politicians.90
The Twenties

While some scholars pointed to 1888 and James Bryce’s The American
Commonwealth for the idea of an aggregated public opinion, Harwood Childs
recommended the 19205 as marking the start of the current commonsense

understanding of public opinion. The current generally shared idea of public Opinion
as an aggregate of individual opinions began then.9| During the 19205, a great deal of

interest in customer surveys and reader interest studies existed.92 The testing of

soldiers during World War I led to improvements in questionnaire techniques.

 

”Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 70-71.
”Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 12. '
”Palmer, “Public Opinion in Political Theory,” 12.

"Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 32.

44

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Machines had been developed that could tabulate and summarize large amounts of
data at high speed. According to Childs, “This explains in part the growth during the

twenties of widespread interest in statistical studies of public opinion and in attempts

to measure opinion, and the emphasis placed upon quantitative methods.”93 As an
example of how extensive the efforts were in the 19205 to influence public opinion, he

pointed out the Federal Trade Commission’s “famous report on the public Opinion

activities of gas and electric light interests in 1927.”94 Businesses were trying to
influence public opinion, questionnaires were being used in testing, and customers and

readers were being asked for their opinions.

The Thirties

 

Various factors contributed to the study of public opinion in the 19305. The
first university. classes on public opinion were taught. George Gallup began
syndication of a weekly column of public opinion poll results in 1935 and successfully
predicted the outcome of the 1936 presidential election. The soon-to-become
prestigious academic journal Public Opinion Quarterly began publication in 1937.

There were other changes as well. The New Deal and the need for public
support of United States government policy, along with the use of propaganda by

dictators in Russia, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Japan, contributed to the increasing

 

”Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 33.
93Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 32.
9‘Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 33.

45

interest in public opinion early in the decade.95 National organizations promoting
business interests were increasing their use of publicity campaigns. Childs wrote, “To
counter the New Deal, business turned more and more to professional public relations

agencies for support in fighting ‘that man in the White House’ and preserving ‘the

American Way.’”96 The press became more interested in what the masses thought
about public policy, and more columnists were discussing public policy issues.

Business people, advertisers, and marketers had used sampling on large numbers of

people, and surveys had been used to discover reader interest.97
The stage was set for Gallup’s 1936 leap to notoriety when the pollster created
his own sampling formula and a way to sell the results, according to Childs. “He

conceived the idea of selling a syndicated column to newspapers reporting the results

of nation-wide surveys of public opinion on public policy issues.”98 As Childs wrote,
What distinguished the Gallup, Roper, and Crossley polls from preceding
public opinion surveys was their alleged use of scientific methods of sampling
which assured their accuracy to within a few percentage points of the public
opinion sampled. These sampling methods had been used for a number of

years by market researchers, and were now to be applied to a survey of nation-

. . . . . . . . 99
wrde oprmon on political, economic, and socral issues.

 

9’Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 34. Russia is Childs’ choice.
9“Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 34.

”Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 71.

”Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 71.

”Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 35-36.

46

By the end of the decade the Gallup poll had become an institutional fixture in the

United States, England, and other countries?” Gallup’s successful prediction of the
results of the 1936 presidential election made him famous. Gallup had directly
challenged the long running success at predicting presidential elections of the mass
circulation magazine, The Literary Digest. The incorrect prediction by The Literary
Digest in 1936 made Gallup’s successful prediction all the more surprising.

In a Public Opinion Quarterly article in 1985, public opinion scholar Albert
Gollin pinpointed the moment when a common understanding of the definition of

'0‘ In an article titled, “In Search of a Useable

public opinion as poll results was fixed.
Past,” he placed the moment between Gallup’s correct prediction of Franklin
Roosevelt’s election as president of the United States and the founding of the

academic journal that would represent the new field when he wrote, “If one seeks a

more precise watershed for this recognition, I would nominate the two month period

between November 1936 and January 1937.”'02

Scholar Hadley Cantril, in 1940, summarized what was known in the field of
public opinion about public opinion polls. The history of polls linked the practice of
polling in 1940 backward from the early polling by political parties—the straw polls—

through some refinement by market researchers. Polls could accurately predict

 

'°°Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 36.

'°' It is important to note that as recently as 1985 Public Opinion Quarterly supported the idea of a
watershed in the understanding of the meaning of the concept of public opinion.

mGollin, “In Search of a Useable Past,” 414-424.

47

elections. It was the difference in sampling methods that allowed the pollsters to
successfully predict Roosevelt’s victory while the unscientific methods of The Literary
Digest poll had failed to do 50. Polls, according to Cantril’s writing in Public Opinion
Quarterly, were better than elections because not everyone who wanted to vote could
get to the voting booth, while a poll would more accurately represent all views, even if
the holder of the view did not get to vote. Meanwhile, an election was the only way to
test the accuracy of a public opinion poll. Polls should be taken seriously since they
accurately predicted elections. Cantril argued polls re-established the kind of
democracy lost when the United States grew too large for decisions to be made in
town meetings. Still, there were recognized problems with polling to be overcome. It
was not yet clear if people were wise or incompetent. It was not yet clear if polls could

debunk pressure groups. There was concern about who should conduct polls and if

polls should be in the hands of social scientists or practical men?” If people were
incompetent, then they could not give reasoned answers to policy questions. There was
widespread concern that pressure groups created opinions and thus the opinion given
to a pollster by an individual was not one based on reason, and a reasoned opinion was
called for by traditional democratic theory. Who should control the polls was Cantril’s
final concern. There were people who advocated that the government, instead of
businesses such as Gallup’s, control polling on policy issues and elections.

Harwood Childs and Public Opinion Quarterly

 

”Hadley Cantril, “The Public Opinion Polls: Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?” Public Opinion Quarterly, 4
(1940): 212-217.

48

W. Phillips Davison, editor of Public Opinion Quarterly from 1948 to 1951

and from 1968 to 1972, called Harwood Childs the moving spirit behind the journal
Public Opinion Quarterly?” Childs graduated from Dartmouth College and completed

his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago?” He joined the faculty at Princeton

University in 1931. During the 1933-1934 school year at Princeton, he taught one of

the first university courses on public opinion.‘06 A Reference Guide to the Study of

Public Opinion, the course syllabus, was published as a small book in 1934, and

Edward L. Bemays, one of the founders of public relations, provided a forward.107

Bernays wrote, “Professor Harwood L. Childs has placed under debt to him all those

who come in contact with the field of public opinion management, whether they are

students or concerned with practical work.”'08 Childs thanked Bemays for suggesting

that the course material be more widely distributed and for “facilitating the
publication”'09 of the book. Nine of the twenty-two sections were concerned with
opinion management.”°

In the fall of 1935, Childs, then an associate professor of politics, proposed a

new journal to study public opinion by sending a memo to DeWitt Clinton Poole,

 

'°‘W. Phillips Davison, “POQ’s Fifty-Year Odyssey” Public Opinion Quarterly, 51(1987): SS.

"”Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, dust jacket.

'“Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 4, n. l.

lo"Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, ii.

lo'Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, ii.

l”Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, v.

”° The book reproduced the class syllabus. For each section of the syllabus, there was a brief
narrative introduction followed by a list of books and articles. Individual books and articles sometimes

49

eat}

“35

pm
160p.
hall‘s

andh

director of the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. In suggesting
the school support a new journal, Childs described the range of the interdisciplinary
work on public opinion under way at the time. “Public Opinion in all its political,

psychological, economic, sociological, statistical, historical, and even future aspects

was to be the field of interest,” he wrotem Childs’ proposal was discussed at a

Nassau Club dinner on October 22, 1935, and shortly after was approved by the

president of Princeton.1 '2

This was just days after George Gallup’s poll of opinion results had appeared
in newspaper syndication.

As Childs remembered 20 years later, first a “score or more of friends”l '3 of
each man, all involved in public opinion in some way, was asked to contribute. There
was enough interest in the study of public opinion to prompt contributors to
underwrite and subscriptions to a new journal. Between ten and twenty people

provided the seed money of $250 to $500 per year for three years, and 1,000 to 1,500

people were counted on for subscriptionsm Poole was the first editor. Childs had a
half-time appointment as managing editor. Childs had a secretary, Mary Mott Regan,

and his part time editorial assistant, Datus Smith, Jr., had been the editor of Princeton

Alumni Weekly.” Childs headed the section on public relations. Hadley Cantril at

 

were listed in more than one section. The content of the syllabus vividly displays the multiple
influences on the emerging field of public opinion.
'“Harwood L. Childs, “The First Editor Looks Back” Public Opinion Quarterly, 21 (1957): 7-13, 8.
”zChilds, “The First Editor,” 7.
”’Childs, “The First Editor,” 9.
l"Childs, “The First Editor,” 9.
”’Childs, “The First Editor,” 9.

50

Colmnbia University headed the section on methods,” E. Pendleton Herring at
Harvard University headed the section on interest groups, Harold Lasswell at the
University of Chicago headed the section on government, and Oscar W. Riegle at
Washington and Lee University headed the section on communications. In addition to
Princeton, Harvard, the University of Chicago and Columbia, public opinion research

was under way at Ohio State University, the University of Illinois and the University

of Minnesota.”7
The first issue of Public Opinion Quarterly carried the still well-known article
by Floyd Allport, “Toward a Science of Public Opinion.” In the article, he defined

public opinion while at the same time he dismissed alternative definitions and methods

”11

as “fictions and blind alleys. 8 Allport’s definition of public opinion required that
the issues being considered were public issues and involved a decision about public
issues. Defining public opinion and public issues he wrote,
The term public opinion is given its meaning with reference to a multi-
individual situation in which individuals are expressing themselves, or can be

called upon to express themselves, as favoring or supporting (or else

disfavoring or opposing) some definite condition, person, or proposal of

 

"6 W. Phillips Davison, “POQs fifty-year odyssey,” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (1987) S4. Davis
placed Cantril at Princeton when the journal began. See note below.

mChilds, “The First Editor,” 9. The Public Opinion Quarterly origin stories are quite similar,
however, where there were differences, I used Child’s version. His is the richest, and he was there. To
my knowledge, no one has examined any founding documents, if they exist.

”'Gordon Allport, “Toward a Science of Public Opinion,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 1 (l 937): 7-
23, 7.

51

widespread importance, in such a proportion of number, intensity, and

constancy, as to give rise to the probability of affecting action, directly or

indirectly, toward the object concerned. ' '9
Allport was one of the people pioneering quantitative methods. Quantitative work by
Allport, Harold Gosnell, and LL. Thurstone was summarized by Stuart A. Rice in

Quantitative Methods in Politics in 1928 and George A. Lundberg in Social Research

in 1929.120

There were close, personal connections among the early public opinion

researchers. Gallup and Cantril were friends. Crossley lived in Princeton, New

Jersey. Lazarsfeld was at Princeton University for a time, and so was Cantril}?

According to W. Phillips Davison, as a result of the strong personal network among
those doing public opinion research, there was not a formal refereeing process for
articles through the 19405. In 1987, former Public Opinion Quarterly editor Davison
explained, “The decision making process was, however, not so arbitrary as it might
now appear. At the outset, Harwood Childs, together with his remarkable group of

Associate Editors (Cantril, Herring, Lasswell, and Riegel) had a fairly comprehensive

view of who was doing what, and how well they were doing it.’”22 Public Opinion

Quarterly was started by academics but in a few years the editorial board included

 

H”Allport, “Toward a Science,” 23.

”Stephan, “Survey Methods and Measurement Techniques,” 79.
'“Davison, “POQ’s Fifty-year Odyssey,” S8.

”’Davison, “POQ’s Fifty-year Odyssey” S8

52

 

members from businesses such as publishing, advertising, public relations and opinion

I 23
research.

Child’s class in public opinion, Princeton’s willingness to support a new
journal, and the financial support provided by individual scholars all point to the
conclusion that the study of public opinion was well under way in several fields and in
several universities by 1935.
George Gallup .

George Gallup was widely credited with promoting the public opinion industry

and the current dominant definition of public opinion)” The name George Gallup and

The Gallup Poll have been nearly synonymous for more than 50 years with public

opinion poll in much of the worldm As was written in Time magazine in the fall of
1948, “But George Gallup’s four-a-week releases to 126 US. newspapers have made

the ‘Gallup Poll’ a household word and Gallup the Babe Ruth of the polling

profession?”26 He not only took credit for nearly single handedly inventing public

 

'z’Davison, “POQ’s Fifty-year Odyssey” SS.

'“Albert H. Cantril, “In Memoriam: George Horace Gallup, Sr. 1901-1984” Public Opinion
Quarterly 48 (1984): 807-808; John E. Drewry, Post Biographies of Famous Journalists (Athens,
Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1942), viii; J. Michael Hogan, “George Gallup and the
Rhetoric of Scientific Democracy,” Communication Monographs 64 (1997): 161-l79, 162; David W.
Moore, The Superpollsters: How They Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America (New
York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1992), 56, 229; Lindsay Rogers, The Pollsters: Public Opinion,
Politics, and Democratic Leadership (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 3 n. l .; Charles T. Salmon
and Theodore L. Glasser, “The Politics of Polling and the Limits of Consent,” 439-441.

”’Cantril, “In Memoriam: George Horace Gallup, Sr. 1901-1984” 808; Hogan, “George Gallup and
the Rhetoric of Scientific Democracy,” 161-162. It may be that Gallup and polling have become
synonymous and his first name forgotten. In the course of doing this dissertation, I encountered several
people who were unaware Gallup was the name of a person.

12"“Opinion: The Black and White Beans” Time, 3 May I948, 21.

53

 

 

 

opinion polling; he served as historian and promoter of the industry that could bring

science to the straw polls.127 As social scientist Lindsay Rogers wrote:
If I refer to Dr. Gallup more often than to any of his colleagues in the polling
fratemity, he will not mind, because he has written widely and spoken
frequently to explain the ‘new science’ to the public. He has been more
assiduous than any other pollster in publicizing his undertaking and himself,
has been immortalized by a skit, ‘Please Leave My Pulse Alone,’ in the revue,
Inside U.S.A., and has broadcast his measurements of public opinion in

television-- ‘The George Gallup Show’--presenting ‘views and trends of the

national in politics and public afi‘airs."28

Gallup’s life was coterminous with the twentieth century, his businesses with
the growth of quantitative social science in universities and the exponential expansion
of advertising and marketing research.

Gallup’s biography was told consistently, beginning with an article in the
Saturday Evening Post in 1939 by Williston Rich and most recently by Jean Converse
in her book Survey Research in the United States in 1987: Gallup was born in 1901 in
Jefferson, Iowa, a town of 4,000. His father was a school teacher and land speculator,

and the family was doing well at the century’s turn, well enough to afford a nurse who

 

'"Converse, Survey Research, 115, 116; Hogan, “George Gallup and the Rhetoric of Scientific
Democracy,” 16], 163.
”Rogers, The Pollsters: Public Opinion, Politics, and Democratic Leadership, 3, n. l.

54

nicknamed the child Ted because she so admired—and Gallup’s father hated—
Theodore Roosevelt. Gallup went to college at the University of Iowa in Iowa City
where he served as editor of the college paper. Gallup began graduate school while he

taught journalism at his alma mater and earned a masters degree in 1925 and a

doctorate in Psychology in 1928.]29 In the summer of 1922, Gallup interviewed people

by going door to door and asking them about the St. Louis Globe-Democrat

newspaper.’30 It was during that summer he decided he could come up with a better
way to find out what readers liked, and that eventually led to his dissertation, “An
Objective Method for Determining Reader Interest in the Content of a Newspaper.”

His dissertation was financed by the Des Moines newspaper publisher and founder of
Look magazine, Gardner Cowles, Jam In 1928, Gallup went to Drake University in
Des Moines to head the journalism department. In 1931, Lever Brothers company

signed Gallup as an advertising consultant. In 1932, the advertising agency Young

and Rubicam hired Gallup as research director.’32 In 1935, with the help of Chicago-
based newspaper feature syndicator Harold R. Anderson, he opened the American
Institute of Public Opinion (AIPO) in New York. The AIPO office was moved to

Princeton, New Jersey, shortly after because Gallup thought the Princeton postmark

would add prestige to his business.’33

 

'“Converse, Survey Research, 114; Williston Rich, Jr. “The Human Yardstick,” Post Biographies of
Famous Journalists ed. John E. Drewry (Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1942),
1 12-1 18.

l”Converse, Survey Research, 1 l4.

"'Converse, Survey Research, 1 15.

InConverse, Survey Research, 1 15.

I33Rich, Jr. “The Human Yardstick,” 116, 119, 125.

55

Gallup was publishing articles in business, journalism and advertising
periodicals in the late twenties and early thirties. They included, “Traits of Successful
Retail Salespeople” in the Journal of Personnel Research in 1926; “A Scientific
Method for Determining Reader Interest” in Journalism Quarterly in 1930; two
articles in Editor & Publisher, “Guesswork Eliminated in New Method for
Determining Reader Interest” in 1930 and “Survey Shows Radio Advertisers Reach
But Small Portion of Public” in 1931; and “What Do Newspaper Readers Read?” in
Advertising & Selling in 1932. Not only was he authoring articles in academic and
trade publications, but others were writing about his work in trade magazines. The
articles about Gallup’s work in 1932 included “How Advertising Techniques Are
Rated by Gallup Survey,” in Printers ’ Ink; “Research Shows Reader Preference” and
“Telephone Surveys Puncture Radio Claims to Intensive Coverage,” in Editor &
Publisher; “The Gallup Method of Advertising Research,” in Advertising and Selling;
“Gallup Survey Paves Way for Stronger Copy,” in Advertising Age; and “Research:
Gallup” in Tide. Additionally, in 1932, Gallup had what he later described as the
inspiration that led to the creation of public opinion polling. As written in Time
magazine, “By 1932 Pollster Gallup was an up-&-coming expert at finding out who ~

read what kind of toothpaste ads and why. One day he said to himself: ‘If it works for

toothpaste, why not for politics.”"34

In 1932, without an election campaign, his Democrat mother-in-law was

elected secretary of state in solidly Republican Iowa. This made Gallup curious.

¥

"‘“Opinion: The Black and White Beans” Time 3 May 1948, 22-23.

56

After compiling the voting records for all the counties in the United States, in late
1933, he sent out a mail survey on congressional races. He later claimed to have been
within one percent when he compared his results to the 1934 election results.
According to Gallup, his training in the methods of applied psychology, his interest in
journalism and this encounter with electoral politics led him to public opinion polling
and his weekly column of poll results!” Through the Publishers Syndicate, a business
that sold the same newspaper content to multiple newspapers, Gallup’s weekly column
of poll results was published in 1935 in forty-five newspapers that paid between $500
and $25,000 per year. The fees were based on circulation. Those fees covered the cost
of the polling for the “America Speaks” column.136 The newly formed American
Institute of Public Opinion conducted the polls.137 Gallup immediately began what
would become a life-long effort promoting his polls as scientific and objective.138 At
the same time, he linked the polls to a democratic vision from the past'39 that in effect

“bottled the air of democracy?”40

 

'3’Converse, Survey Research, 114-121; Rich, Jr. “The Human Yardstick” 116.

"‘ Moore, Superpollsters, 32.

”’“Editors Asset in Naming List of Poll Queries,” The Washington Post, 20 October, 193 5, 3, 1;
“Gallup Says Measuring Public Opinion Opens Up New Political Reporting Field,” Editor & Publisher,
(November, 1936), 14; R. G. Hubler, “George Horace Gallup: Oracle in Tweeds,” Forum, (February,
1940, 94; J. J. O’ Malley, “Black Beans and White Beans,” The New Yorker, (March 2, 1940), 23.

"'Hogan, “George Gallup and the Rhetoric of Scientific Democracy,” 161-179; George Gallup,
“Measuring Public Opinion” Vital Speeches of the Day 9 March 9, 1936, 372; “Gallup Directs
Institute Polls for the Public,” The Washington Post, 20 October,l935, S 3, 1.

l3”“Bryce Named Poll as Best Opinion Test,” The Washington Post, 20 October, 1935, S 3, 1;
George Gallup and Saul F. Rae, The Pulse of Democracy: The Public Opinion Poll and How it Works
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940), 16-33.

I“’Richard Reeves, “George Gallup’s Nation of Numbers” Esquire, 100 (December, 1983): 91-94,
96, 92.

57

The column “America Speaks” was first published on October 20, 1935. The
headline on page one of section three in The Washington Post read: “Does the
Forgotten Man Still Feel Forgotten? He Answers for Himself in the Weekly Poll.”
The poll, and not F.D.R., would speak for everyone in the United States. Gallup was

making a special effort to reach people in the lower income strata, or who lived in the
country or on small farms.Ml In addition to hiring a blimp to fly over the Washington

D.C.,M2 the paper promoted the new column on the front page of the paper and

repeated the selling points of science, objectivity and listening to the common man.
The Post, among other important papers of the country, presents today--
exclusively in the Nation’s capitol--a national poll of public opinion on the
question of relief. What of our expenditures to bear this burden? Too great?
Too little? About right? The poll, conducted by the American Institute of
Public Opinion, an impartial group, reached a cross-section of the Nation for
the answer. It has been an exact, scientific poll. It obtained the views of the
exalted and the lowly. The poll in this Sunday’s Post-- Page 1, Section III--
introduces the series of polls which will appear each Sunday. The most vital
questions of the moment will be put to the Nation at large.‘43

Gallup’s column appeared in newspapers across the country. Its prominent placement

in the Washington Post made it visible to legislators. These factors and his prolific

 

I"“Polling America” Business Week 30 November, 1935, 26-27.
"’Rich Jr. “The Human Yardstick,” 117.
"’“America Speaks” The Washington Post 20 October, 1935, S 1, 1.

58

writing in a wide range of publications made him chronicler of the fieldm Polling

was his invention."5 As Gallup wrote: “When the first poll of public opinion appeared
in the fall of 1935, politicians viewed them with suspicion. Political scientists and

social scientists generally ignored them. And Washington correspondents and

columnists openly attacked them?”5 Praising the publishers who had purchased his
column of poll results, Gallup noted that only a few had enough confidence to print

them. By 1948, Gallup’s election predictions and poll results went to 126 newspapers
four times a week.”7 While he was not the only one with a public opinion polling
business, he had been its biggest promoter for a dozen years.‘48 Gallup actively
promoted public opinion polling as integral to democracy ”9 and a modernization of

the straw polls using scientific methods for greater accuracy.”50 He claimed predicting

election results was critical to having lawmakers trust the poll results on social

issuesm Cantril wrote in 1991, “George Gallup was the fiercest advocate of the polls

 

'“Converse, Survey Research, 1 15.

l”George Gallup, “The Changing Climate for Public Opinion Research,” Public Opinion Quarterly
21 (1957): 23-27; Rich, Jr., “The Human Yardstick”; Reeves, “George Gallup’s Nation of Numbers”;
“The pollster—right or wrong” Newsweek, 20 August, 1956, 31-34.

'“Gallup, “The Changing Climate,” 23.

"’“Opinion: The Black and White Beans" 21.

l"'Moore, Superpollsters, 57; Converse, Survey Research, 116; Rogers, The Pollsters, 3, n. l.

I”Moore, Superpollsters, 57; Converse, Survey Research,114-124; Childs, Public Opinion: nature,
formation, and role, 84; Gallup and Rae, Pulse of Democracy, 14-15; Hogan, “George Gallup and the
Rhetoric of Scientific Democracy.” 173-175.

I”Converse, Survey Research, 116.

"'George Gallup, The Sophisticated Poll Watcher 's Guide (Ephrata, Pennsylvania: Science Press,
1972), 124.

59

—-1

 

as an instrument of democracy?”2 David Moore wrote that Gallup called himself an

. 153
“evangelist for democracy.”

The link between public opinion polling and democratic politics has been

noted by many.'“ For example, Jean Converse wrote, “In the new public opinion
research that succeeded the Literary Digest, there was not only the appeal of scientific

work but also the attraction of purposeful, public spirited work in the context of

political optimism and democratic idealism.”'55 Philip Converse described the early
pollsters, Gallup, Roper and Crossley, as well as those working on polling in the
United States Department of Agriculture, Renis Likert and Henry Wallace, as “strong

on democratic principles and pleased to provide a means that the voice of the people

might be more clearly heard?”56 Gallup successfully linked science and democracy as

157

he promoted his polls.
George Gallup’s promotion of public opinion polling claimed that polling

brought science to democracy by making the views of the common man known. His

common man was wise, sometimes individually and at other times as part of a wise

majority. For example, Gallup and Rae’s book-long explanation of public opinion

 

I52Albert Cantril, The Opinion Connection: Polling, Politics, and the Press (Washington, DC: CQ
Press, 1991), 10.

"’Moore, Superpollsters, 56.

l"Converse, Survey Research, 123-127; Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role, 30-31;
Price, Communication Concepts 4, 34; Herbst, Numbered Voices,; Philip E. Converse, “Changing
Conceptions of Public Opinion in the Political Process,” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (1987): 812-824;
Harold F. Gosnell, “The Polls and other Mechanisms of Democracy,” Public Opinion Quarterly 4
(1940): 414-424; John C. Ranney, “Do the Polls Serve Democracy,” Public Opinion Quarterly 10
(1946): 349-360; Martin, “The Genealogy of Public Opinion Polling.”

"’Converse, Survey Research, 121.

Is"Converse, P. “Changing Conceptions of Public Opinion in the Political Process” SIS.

60

polls, The Pulse of Democracy: The Public-Opinion Poll and How It Works, began by
wondering in the forward about what was in the mind of the common man. He wrote,
“What is the common man thinking? The life history of democracy can be traced as
an unceasing search for an answer to this vital question.”"” Public opinion polls
provided the answer. Gallup continued, “They [the pages of The Pulse of Democracy]
tell the story of a new instrument—the public opinion poll—and describe how it works

”159

to provide a continuous chart of the opinions of the man in the street. Gallup went
on to describe the common people in the first pages of the first chapter. He wrote that
the stock broker and the farmer were both chance cogs in the “machine that samples

public opinion.””0

Farmers in Maine, thresher operators in Kansas, tenement or Park
Avenue dwellers in New York City, industrialists and the old ladies who mopped
their floors were all asked for an opinion."'

Gallup argued that the survival of democracy depended on the voice of the
common people being heard because in his view, the common people were often wiser
than the elite leaders. For example, the common people were not all people, but rather
workers in opposition to owners or professionals. While the polls were conducted of

all people, Gallup thought of the polls as the only way to make the voice of the

common person heard by those in power. Polls could make the common person as

 

l”Hogan, “George Gallup and the Rhetoric of Scientific Democracy.”
'“Gallup and Rae, The Pulse of Democracy, v.
ls"Gallup and Rae, The Pulse of Democracy, v.
'°° Gallup and Rae, The Pulse of Democracy, 3.
“" Gallup and Rae, The Pulse of Democracy, 4.

61

articulate as the educated elite. He wrote, “If government with the consent of the
governed is to be preserved and strengthened, then the common man, the farmer, the
industrial worker, the stenographer, the clerk, and the factory hand must become as
politically articulate as the professional man, the businessman and the banker.”'62
While Gallup conceded that there could be some small amount of ignorance or apathy
among the common people, he argued that those were exceptions. He wrote, “The
serious observer of public opinion on scores of issues cannot fail to come away with a
feeling of intense admiration for the honesty and common sense with which an
enormous number of ordinary people in all walks of life and at all levels of the
economic scale have continued to meet their responsibilities as citizens.”"” According
to Gallup, the common people were so wise that public opinion polls revealed that the
majority of people were in favor of some type of legislation prior to the legislation
being passed by lawmakers. Gallup wrote, “Almost always the public is ahead of its
legislators. This is perhaps natural and desirable in a democracy. Be that as it may,
many examples can be cited to show how majority opinion has preceded legislative
action in recent years.”'“
For many public opinion scholars—Hadley Cantril, Albert Gollin, W. Phillips

Davison, Eleanor Singer, and William Albig to name a few—1936 marks the

beginning of the study of public opinion. However, the point is moot. Bernard

 

"2 Gallup and Rae, The Pulse of Democracy, 31.
'°’ Gallup and Rae, The Pulse of Democracy, 287.
'6‘ Gallup and Rae, The Pulse of Democracy, 9.

62

Berelson and Morris Janowitz wrote in the 1953 Reader in Public Opinion and
Communication: “Contrary to popular notions and even to the ideas of some
practitioners in the field, the study of public opinion did not spring full-panoplied from
the brow of George Gallup in the 19305?"55 Still, Gallup’s promotion had been a
success. In spite of some dispute, there is a great deal of support for the idea that the
study of public opinion began when public opinion had been quantified in a one-
person, one-vote type of summary. Just as that has become the common sense
understanding of the meaning of the concept,166 so is it widely asserted that the middle

years of the 19305 mark the beginning of the field of study.'67 As William Albig

wrote, “These two decades [1936-1956] span almost exactly the history of polling?”68

Or as Eleanor Singer wrote in 1987, “And the field is really coterminous with the

journal [Public Opinion Quarterly].”’69 Though there has been continual debate, the

widespread success of the public opinion polling industry is credited with sustaining

the world-wide commonsense view of public opinion as poll results.”0

 

'“Bernard Berelson and Morris Janowitz, Reader in Public Opinion and Communication (Glencoe,
Illinois: The Free Press, 1953), 1.

'“Herbst, Numbered Voices, 12, 43, 63, 153; Converse “Changing Conceptions of Public Opinion,”
513.

16"Charles K. Atkin and James Gaudino, “The Impact of Polling on the Mass Media,” Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 472 (1984): 1 19-128; Leo Bogart, Silent Politics:
Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion (New York: John Wiley, 1972), 14; Gollin, “In Search of a
Usable Past,” 416; Gallup “The Changing Climate,” 23.

1“William Albig, “Two Decades of Opinion Study,” Public Opinion Quarterly 21 (1957): 14.

'“Eleanor Singer, “Editor’s Introduction” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (1987):SZ.

”°Converse, P. “Public Opinion in the Political Process,” $13, $17-$18.

63

While there is widespread consensus that the dominant view of public opinion

is the results of polls today, it is not a seamless view, as an ongoing scholarly debate

has continued to challenge mainstream assumptions.m

Alternative Views of Public Opinion: Critics of the Polls

 

Polls as defining public opinion have been contested in spite of their financial
success and domination of commonsense understanding. In one of the earliest and
best known critiques, the sociologist Herbert Blumer claimed that in focusing on the
development of methods, those involved in public opinion research had failed to
define what they were measuring and were not testing general propositions or making
generalizations. Blumer went on to describe an alternative view of public opinion as
the functioning of groups. Public opinion was something that emanated from society
and was formed and expressed by unequal groups who sought to influence peOple who
made political decisions. He sought to make a distinction between voters, who have
equal weight when they cast a ballot, and the many different ways individuals behave
and have influence on public opinion in society. As he concluded:

I would repeat that the formation and expression of public opinion giving rise

to effective public opinion is not an action of a population of disparate

 

”'Theodore L. Glasser and Charles T. Salmon, Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent
(New York: The Guilford Press, 1995); Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence: Public
Opinion — Our Social Skin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Herbst, Numbered Voices;
Pierre Bourdieu, “Public Opinion Does Not Exist” in Communication and Class Struggle eds., Armand
Mattelart and Seth Siegelaub(New York: International General, 1979): 124-130; Herbert Blummer,
“Public Opinion and Public Opinion Polling,” American Sociological Review 13 ( 1948): 542-554;
Lindsay Rogers, The Pollsters,; Michael Wheeler, Lies, damn lies, and statistics: The manipulation of

64

individuals having equal weight, but is a function of a structured society,
differentiated into a network of different kinds of groups and individuals
having different weight and influence and occupying different strategic
positions. Accordingly, to my mind, the success attending polling in the
prediction of elections gives no validity to the method as a means of studying,
recording or measuring public opinion as it forms and functions in our
society.172

Some opinion pollsters remain sensitive to Blumer’s criticism of their method. For

example, as Charles Salmon and Theodore Glasser noted, Public Opinion Quarterly

editor Eleanor Singer began the introduction to the joumal’s fiftieth anniversary

supplement by taking a shot at the sociologist who had spoken just afier the joumal’s

173 ”174

tenth anniversary. She wrote, “Blumer was wrong.
Political scientist Lindsay Rogers compared those conducting polls to
hucksters. He was implying they were crooks when he titled his critique of polling
The Pollsters. Rogers’ book was published just affer the failure of the polls to
accurately predict the 1948 election of Harry S Truman as President of the United

States. Primarily from a political science perspective, Rogers expanded his critique

from the way democratic claims are used to include an explanation of measurement

 

public opinion in America (New York: Dell, 1976); Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive Public (New
York: Basic Books, 1986).

mHerbert Blumer, “Public Opinion and Public Opinion Polling,” American Sociological Review, 13
(1948): 547.

”3 Charles T. Salmon and Theodore L. Glasser, “The Politics of Polling and the Limits of Consent,”
438.

"‘Eleanor Singer, “Editor’s Introduction” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (1987): S 1.

65

that is still useful. Rogers showed in detail that pollsters had not defined what they
were studying. His criticisms are many and well argued. His major concern was with

the way in which poll results were claimed to be useful to a democratic society. He

questioned whether the polls served the public interest and concluded they did not.175
Scholar Benjamin Ginsberg criticized polling as a manipulation of the public
by powerful elites. In his view, polling diverted attention from groups—who might

act on their interests—to individual opinion and at the same time has dampened
spontaneous expressions of opinion.'76 He argued that poll results allow government

officials to “anticipate, regulate and manipulate popular attitudes”!77 Several scholars
from various perspectives have expressed concern with the ways in which the
widespread acceptance of polls as measures of public opinion are dangerous or
damaging to democracy, especially to the debate required by the classical idea of

democracy. Public opinion scholar John Peters worried about the absence of

discussion of political issues,‘78 and theorist Jurgen Habermas referred to public

opinion as a fiction.”9 Scholar Clifford Christians saw polls as propaganda that

 

"’Lindsay Rogers, The Pollsters: Public Opinion, Politics, and Democratic Leadership (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1949).

”‘Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive Public: How Mass Opinion Promotes State Power (New York:
Basic Books, 1986).

l7"Ginsberg, The Captive Public, 85

”'John Durham Peters, “Historical Tensions in the Concept of Public Opinion” in Public Opinion
and the Communication of Consent, eds. Theodore L. Glasser and Charles T. Salmon (New York:
Guilford Press, 1995), 3-32.

l7”Jurgen Habermas, The structural transformation of the public sphere, trans. T. Burer and F.
Lawrence (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1989).

66

limited discussion.I80 Researcher James Carey considered polling, in cooperation with

journalism, as part of a process that prevents public opinion from formingm
In an argument that conceived polling as a ritual, theorist Lisbeth Lipari saw

polls constructing social solidarity since polls ritually control dissent and allow for the

affirmation of unity in spite of differences.’82 She argued polling domesticated

disagreement: “In polling ritual, the symbols of public and nation serve to stress unity

and similarity and minimize discord and differences?”83

Susan Herbst took a long historical view of public opinion. Using Max
Weber’s theories about the rationalization of industrial society, as well as the thinking
of Michel Foucault, Herbst showed the way in which polls conducted by professional
polling organizations replaced other forms of communicating opinion and thus limited
the intensity of political expressions, and also acted as a form of surveillance. She

argued for a shifting concept of public opinion that is contingent on technology,

commrmication, and social climate.I84 When she turned her attention to political
actors’ understanding of public opinion, she took James Bryce as a supporter of the

idea that public opinion was the opinion of groups. She wrote: “Alexis de

 

"”Clifford G. Christians, “Propaganda and the Technological System,” in Public Opinion and the
Communication of Consent, eds. Theodore L. Glasser and Charles T. Salmon (New York: Guilford
Press, 1995), 156-174.

l"James W. Carey, “The Press, Public Opinion and Public Discourse,” in Public Opinion and the
Communication of Consent, eds. Theodore L. Glasser and Charles T. Salmon (New York: Guilford
Press, 1995), 373-402.

"2Lisbeth Lipari, “Polling as Ritual,” Journal of Communication 49 (1999):83-102

I”Lipari, “Polling as Ritual” 95.

1"Susan Herbst, Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling has Shaped American Politics (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995).

67

Tocqueville, James Bryce, Arthur Bentley, David Truman, Herbert Blumer, and other

nineteenth- and early twentieth-century observers of American politics believed that

group opinion and public opinion were one and the same.”'85 Herbst did not directly
oppose the idea of public opinion meaning poll results, but rather connected the
understandings of public opinion to different technologies as it has changed over time.

As has been shown, there have been critics of defining public opinion as
polling since public opinion polling burst to success in the mid-193 Os. The criticisms
of the pollsters continues today, even though the term pollster now lacks the critical
edge with which its use was initially intended by Rogers.
Reconsidered: Received Tradition of Public Opinion Polling as Prgggess Story

What I have called the received tradition of public opinion polling is nearly
always told as a story of progress through the development of polling. Herbst asked
readers to attend to the different technologies used in relation to determining public
opinion, and she points out what was lost when the technology changed. Gallup was
tremendously successful in spreading not only the business practice of polling, but
also the definition of public opinion as polling and linking that definition to
democratic government while he emphasized his poll as the scientific successor to
straw polls. Gallup’s version was a story of progress and the success of science. His

assumptions were apparent in both the major historical treatments and the fragments of

 

"’Susan Herbst, Reading Public Opinion: How Political Actors View the Democratic Process

68

Ph

0f

history used to explain the emergence and success of public opinion polling.

However, it is Lipari’s vision of polling as ritual practice that points the way to
re-thinking the success of public opinion as polling. Lipari argued the symbols of
public and nation, linked in polling, serve to stress unity and minimize difference. She

sees polls as creating, sustaining and renewing a sense of the sacredness of the demos

in current national political culture.’86 She wrote, “Each time we turn to our
newspaper, computer, radio, or television and are updated with the latest poll results,

we are not just reminded that a national public and its opinions exists, but are hailed as

charter members of the congregation.”'87 Or, in other words, people are hailed as
subjects of the state in the church of the nation-state. She is concerned with the way in

which polling as ritual “appropriates discord and thereby creates a vision of

empowering community.”'88 She continued, “What is constructed with polling ritual
is not public policy, but apparent social solidarity. That is, regardless of the divisions

and cleavages presented in poll results, the symbols of our unity burn on as a

photographic af‘terimage.”189
If, as Philip Converse claimed in Public Opinion Quarterly in 1987, a variety

of meanings of public opinion abounded before 1936, and some people used multiple

meanings of the concept simultaneously,‘90 then Lipari’s conclusions prompt other

 

(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998) 6.

"‘Lipari, “Polling as Ritual.”

"’Lipari, “Polling as Ritual,” 97.

'"Lipari, “Polling as Ritual,” 99.

l”Lipari, “Polling as Ritual,” 99.

"°Philip E. Converse “Changing Conceptions of Public Opinion in the Political Process” Public
Opinion Quarterly, 51 (1987) 813.

69

questions. They are questions not addressed in the progress tale of polling where
alternative definitions of public opinion are usually ignored, given short shrifi, or
ridiculed, and the meaning of nation is not addressed at all. Yet Gallup’s common
man was a citizen of something.

Before the success of polling fixed the meaning of the concept of public
opinion as poll results, what were the relationships between public opinion and nation
in the academic literature that was the foundation of the field of public opinion? If
Gallup argued for a wise common man who was the citizen of the nation, what was the
conception of the common man in public opinion canon? How, if at all, do the articles
that comprise Child’s syllabus for his public opinion class use the concept of nation?
These questions are important because their answers will provide a richer
understanding of the past. The answers will provide a richer context for the story that
now is the received tradition of the field of public opinion polling. The answers may
reveal the way in which important parts of the past are covered over, or forgotten,
making it more difficult to understand the present. Following a discussion of the
nation and nationalism in the next chapter, those questions are approached in the

analysis of the texts of the public opinion canon between 1886 and 1934.

70

Chapter Three

Nationalism and Nation

Scholars have used multiple disciplinary lenses, including history, psychology,
sociology, anthropology, political economy, and literary criticism, to study the
concepts of nationalism and nation. Nationalism has played a role in world politics for
at least two centuries without the benefit of a widely accepted definition. Key thinkers
of modernity—Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Freud, and Gramsci—have had little to say
about it. A range of scholars and political actors disagree whether nationalism springs
from antiquity or modernity, whether it began in the New World or the Old, whether it
is rooted in nature or intellect, whether it results from structural forces or changing
perceptions of time and space. These broad strokes, however, barely suggest the depth
of the disagreement or the elaborated alternatives.l

Several suggestions have emerged about ways to understand nationalism as a
modern phenomenon that political nationalists nonetheless believe is antique. These
suggestions provide answers to the question; Why do some people believe nationalism
is rooted in the distant past when it is actually a phenomenon that has emerged
historically only in the last few hundred years? And despite a lack of attention from
the best-known social theorists—Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Freud, and Gramsci—

nationalism has exerted a great deal of political muscle.

 

1 Benedict Anderson, “Introduction,” in Mapping the Nation, ed. Gopal Balakrishnan (London:
Verso, 1996), 1-16.

71

Similarly to the concept of public opinion and related to it, the concept of
nation has had multiple meanings since the idea emerged in time. The idea of nation
had no political clout in the early 18005, but by 1914 politicians could assume the
naturalness of a world divided among nations. This dissertation is concerned
primarily with the way the key concepts—public opinion, nation, democracy and the
common man—are understood by elite authors in the public opinion canon up until
1933. Nation played a key political role around the turn of the century and it is
necessary to understand nationalism in order to understand these authors use of
nationalism and public opinion.

This chapter sketches the scholarly conversation about nationalism and details
several theorists’ contributions. This review lays a foundation for analyzing
“nationalism” and “nation” in relation to “public opinion” in the articles that comprise
Harwood Child’s Princeton syllabus. Because the concepts of public opinion and
nation emerged historically at about the same time and are related to each other, it is
necessary to have an overview of the development of nation and nationalism. Scholar
Ernest Gellner gives a historical, sociological, and structural account of the formation
of nationalism and nations. Historian Eric J. Hobsbawm describes nationalism and its
nineteenth-century transformations in Europe. Katherine Verdery takes nation as a
symbol. Gellner, Hobsbawm and Verdery are used here, among many who have
written about nation and nationalism, because together they provide a wide view of the
concept. This wide view of nationalism, provides a foundation for thinking about the

relationship between public opinion and nation.

72

“Nation” is sometimes treated as a form of identity, such as class, gender, race,
region, or religion. National loyalty or identity often exerts a power over individuals
of a certain class, race, and gender, despite a continuing difference of opinion about
the definition of the concept of nation. Furthermore, scholars’ discussions do not
represent a consensus of opinion about ethnic (as opposed to political) components of
the concept of nation, the subjective elements such as memory, and the objective
elements such as language or territory.2 Nationalists give imperative aspects for “the
people”—-variously defined—in the name of nationalism. The people must be free
from external constraint, must be united, and must be gathered together in a historic
territory. They must determine their own destiny, dissolve internal divisions, control
their resources, obey their inner voice, have legal equality, and share a single culture.
They must also have a historic identity in a homeland and a culture passed down
through the generations—where the culture was an expression of their national
identity.3

Events that mark of the advent of nationalism include the Partition of Poland in
1775, the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776, the
French Revolution in 1789 and 1792, and Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation in

1807. These events took place during a period soaked in neo-classicism —a revival of

 

2 John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, “Introduction” in Nationalism, eds. John Hutchinson and
Anthony D. Smith (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 3-4.

3 Hutchinson and Smith, “Introduction,” 4.

73

the patriotism of Sparta, Athens, and republican Rome, including the exemplars of the
public and heroic virtues and were visible in arts, letters, and politics.4

The French Revolution and the US. War of Independence expressed the
radical politics that emerged from eighteenth-century social, political, and intellectual
developments—some of which drew on neo-classical, Romantic, Puritan, and
technological antecedents. The result transformed absolutism into the nation-state, as
the models of the United States and France were taken up in various ways.5 The
transformation took more than a century, yet by 1914, nation, language, and race had
become nearly synonymous, and the concept of the nation was considered to be
natural and a matter of common sense.

Ernest Gellner, followed by. Eric Hobsbawm, defined nationalism thusly:
“Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the
national unit should be congruent.”6 Gellner added to the assumption that the unit
should have leaders who were of the same nation. He wrote the following about the
nationalist attitude: “It not only defines the limits of the unit, but assumes that the unit
has an institutional leadership (‘the state’), and its main concern is that the positions in
this institutional power centre be manned by members of the ‘national’ culture, the one

which defines the unit. To put it in simple language: no foreigners may rule us!”7

 

4 Hutchinson and Smith, “Introduction,” 5.

5 Hutchinson and Smith, “Introduction,” 7. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York:
Verso, 1995), 47-65.

6 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 1; Eric Hobsbawm,
Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), 9.

7 Ernest Gellner, Nationalism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson), 6.

74

Hobsbawm added that the basic principle also implies a political duty of the individual
to the polity, which trumps other obligations.8

The “nation” belongs to a recent historical period and refers to a modern
territorial state, the nation-state, which was a creation or invention of nationalism.
“Nations” follow “nationalism.”9 Nationalism arises from a combination of changing
social forces including the development of standard print language and administrative.
technical, political, and economic change.10 Nations primarily are constructed by
leaders. Nations are elite phenomena that must be understood from the perspective of
ordinary people.“

Hobsbawm urged his reader to avoid making mistakes about the feelings of
ordinary persons. He described how historians had been mistaken about public
opinion. He differentiated among governments, the activists of nationalist
movements, and “the ordinary persons who are the objects of their action and
propaganda.”12 He wrote that social historians who have investigated the history of
ideas have made clear distinctions: “We are today less likely to confuse, as historians

once habitually did, editorials in select newspapers with public opinion.”'3 National

 

8 Hobsbawm, “Nations and Nationalism,” 9. Hobsbawm further distinguishes modem nationalism
from the less demanding form of national or group identification.

9 Gellner, “Nations and Nationalism,” 48-9; Hobsbawm, “Nations and Nationalism,” 10.

‘0 Gellner, “Nationalism”; Hobsbawm, “Nations and Nationalism,” 10.

“ Hobsbawm, “Nations and Nationalism,” 10. I agree with him on the necessity of understanding
the phenomena of nationalism from below and the difficulty of doing so. This work does not address
the views of nationalism or public opinion from below, the view of ordinary people. It is concerned
with the way the elite academics imagined the ordinary person, public opinion and nation when they
wrote to each other in academic journals.

‘2 Hobsbawm, “Nations and Nationalism,” 1 1.

‘3 Hobsbawm, “Nations and Nationalism,” ll.

75

consciousness develops unevenly across regions and among social groups, and the
masses of ordinary people are the last to be affected by it.M The development of
national consciousness involves a change in individual consciousness evoked from
changing perceptions of time, space, and the narrative created to cover over those
changing perceptions, Benedict Anderson wrote.”

Gellner clarifies how the social forces of industrial transformation created the
conditions for nationalism, which in turn created nations. '6 Hobsbawm described in
more detail what happened as nationalist programs gained mass support.l7 Cornell
Professor Benedict Anderson explained how the people came to believe in an antique
nation; that is a national identity with roots much deeper in history than evidence
supports. The fiction of an antique nation, stemming from a shifi in concepts of time
and space, became part of the people’s perceived national history, or narrative}8
Anderson described the way in which bureaucrats from countries with colonies
uhintentionally engendered nationalism. Anderson’s analysis concluded that
bureaucrats sent to administer the colonies unwittingly fostered nationalism.
Bureaucrats counted and sorted indigenous people by the bureaucrats’ own perception
of differences among the indigenous people where they were groups geographically.
When bureaucrats took a census, they sorted responses according to those perceived

differences. When they drew maps, the maps reflected how they saw population

 

'4 Hobsbawm, “Nations and Nationalism,” 12

'5 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
(London, New York: Verso, 1995) 163-187.

'6 Gellner, “Nations and Nationalism” and “Nationalism.”
17 Hobsbawm, “Nations and Nationalism”

76

distribution according to the groups that they had labeled. Indigenous people who saw
the maps came to think of themselves according to the labels on the maps and in the
census. He also theorized that nationalists found it necessary to believe in an antique
nation; it was the nationalists’ perceived history, or narrative, that rose to popular
acceptance as other historical accounts and evidence of the indigenous people’s history
fell out of favor. In effect, the new narrative became the foundation for the new
“national awareness.”19 Nationalism arose from changes in government, economics,
and education. Nationalism relied on print literacy and involved changes in how
people thought of themselves. Sometimes the changes were unintentional
consequences of other actors. Sometimes the changes were intentionally engineered
by government.
99119.91

To explain the historical emergence of nationalism, Gellner takes a middle
position between necessary and contingent. Nationalism is necessary for the
formation of nations in some cultural conditions, but those conditions are not present
at all times and in all places; thus the notion that nationalism is contingent. Neither
nationalism nor states are universal. Nationalism took root in the modem industrial
world, and its origin is from the features of the modern world.20 Gellner maintains it

is nationalism that creates nations.

 

'8 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1995), 163-206.
19 Anderson, “Imagined Communities,” 163-206.
20 Gellner, Nationalism, I3.

77

Homogeneity of culture is the basic requirement of citizenship, according to
Gellner. Nationalism is explained by the principal that homogeneity of culture forms
the basis of a political bond and the ability to participate in and be accepted in a given
culture. Knowing the language and other skills of the culture is the basic requirement
of social, political, and economic citizenship. Those who do not master the dominant
culture must either accept second-class citizenship or subservience, leave, try to learn
the culture, or seek change under the political control of those similar to themselves.
This principal has operated in many places for the last three centuries, continues to
operate, and has a powerful hold on those under its influence—most of whom do not
understand it.21

Cultural conditions turn some people into nationalists, according to Gellner.
They believe that their nationalist feelings are natural, which they are, if “natur ”
simply means resulting from those cultural conditions. Gellner wrote that the
nationalist sentiment in politics has roots in our modern lifestyle. Within any one
political unit, one finds a homogeneous, single high culture. Its nationalist sentiment
condemns those who have not mastered the political units culture, or who are
unacceptable to it, to a humiliating, painful second-class status.22 Nationalism takes
similarity of culture as the basic social bond that legitimizes membership in the group.
“In its extreme version, similarity of culture becomes both the necessary and the
sufficient condition of legitimate membership: only members of the appropriate

culture may join the unit in question, and all of them must do so (emphasis in

 

2‘ Gellner, Nationalism, 29-30.

78

original)”23 Gellner’s definition of nationalism tightly links organization and culture.
The emotive aspect of this link defines the limits of the organizational unit and
assumes that the organizational unit had an institutional leadership. Nationalism
assumes an institutional leadership—the state—and is mainly concerned that positions
in the institution are held only by members of the culture.24 As Gellner wrote, “To put
it in simple language: no foreigners may rule usl”25 “Us,” in “no foreigners may rule
us,” refers to members of the same culture. This may seem obvious, however, when
the characteristics that are believed to define culture in a specific time and place-—
language, religion, traditions, and physical attributes——are contested, sorting out the
foreigners is not always easy, especially from a distance.

Gellner defined culture as “a shared style of expression in words, facial
expression, body language, style of clothing, preparation and consumption of food and
so forth.”26 Culture allows for the transmission of traits between generations, greater
diversity, and faster change than would happen with genetic transmission. Culture is a
bank of acquired traits with enormous possibility for diversity and rapid change.
People with a shared culture occupy social positions with attendant expectations of
rights and obligations.27

Culture played a different role in the pre-industrial, agrarian world than it does

now. In the agrarian age, the division of labor and of social organization became

 

22 Gellner, Nationalism, 102-103.
23 Gellner, Nationalism, 102-103.
24 Gellner, Nationalism, 6.
25 Gellner, Nationalism, 6.
25 Gellner, Nationalism, 2.

79

1.‘ 3 3

a
‘J

increasingly complex. Along with economic specialization came specialists in
violence and coercion and salvation and ritual as political centralization became more
common. Society became more complex, hierarchical, and was technologically
stable.28 Culture functions in an agrarian society “to reinforce, underwrite, and render
visible and authoritative, the hierarchical status system of that social order.”29 Culture
then cannot also mark boundaries of the polity. Nationalism could not operate in an
agrarian society because culture was fulfilling the function of maintaining hierarchical
status. Culture could not be used to mark political boundaries before the hierarchy
was displaced.30 Political bonds were not necessarily formed from cultural similarity,
and political bonds did not necessarily flow from cultural similarity. Some aspects of
the agrarian world, however, could contribute to the rise of nationalism—for example,
bureaucratic centralization and Protestant-type religions, Gellner wrote. Alone, they
were not enough to cause a break out of the inherently Malthusian agrarian world in
which population growth was likely to lead to famine.“

As opposed to agrarian stability, economic and scientific growth forms the
foundation of the industrialized world and is—with nationalism—a basis of political
legitimacy.32 Economic and scientific grth imposed a social mobility that led to a

slow shift fi'om social hierarchy toward equality. Gellner clarified it this way: “We are

 

27 Gellner, Nationalism, 3.

28 Gellner, Nationalism, 15-16.

29 Gellner, Nationalism, 20.

3° Gellner, Nationalism, 21.

3' Gellner, Nationalism, 17, 23-24.
32 Gellner, Nationalism, 25

80

not mobile because we are egalitarians, we are egalitarians because we are mobile.”33
If there is economic and scientific growth, new kinds of jobs will form as old types of
jobs vanish. The constant turnover in the kinds of tasks performed, created by growth,
requires a kind of equality.34 As Gellner wrote: “Growth entails innovation, the use of
new techniques, hence the creation of new jobs and the relinquishing of old ones. A
society which lives by growth, which bribes its members into acquiescing by giving
them a confident and justified expectation of moral improvement, rather than by the
old method of terror and superstition, cannot conceivably have a stable occupational
structure.”35 Differences in wealth exist, as would be expected, along a continuum.
Unshackled by law or custom to enforce rank stratification, people have the possibility
of mobility along the wealth and power continuum.36

Industrialism brought growth where there had been stability. Growth required
mobility and occupational change, and mobility required equality, Gellner wrote.
Mobility and equality brought anonymity and a necessary meritocracy. This happened
in the context of the necessity of literacy. The mobile, anonymous individual must be
able to read “context-free” messages.37

Work was transformed from a basis of muscle and local context to a basis of
mind and shared language across local, physical contexts. The ability to understand

context-free messages requires lengthy schooling. Because work is primarily

 

33 Gellner, Nationalism, 26.

34 Gellner, Nationalism, 26.

35 Gellner, Nationalism, 26.

36 Gellner, Nationalism, 27-28.
. 37 Gellner, Nationalism, 28-29.

81

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bound

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communication, a fturctioning society requires that everyone participate in a language
culture that primarily uses anonymous, context-free messages.38 Gellner wrote, “It is a
corollary to the manner in which society functions: precision of articulation, such as
enables a message to transmit meaning by its own internal resources, without making
use of context—a skill possessed in the past by at the most a few specialised scribes —
is now a precondition of employability and social participation and acceptability.”39
The process of nationalization has happened—and is happening—unevenly in time.
The shift toward nationalization moved from a stable, agrarian social order in which
cultural differences supported a hierarchical system of statuses without creating
boundaries for political organizational units, to a mobile, merit-based order, in which
anonymous individuals share a literate culture linked to political boundaries.40

A few cultures emerged to achieve political boundedness—France and Spain
for example. The liberal view that individual pursuit of self-interest in the market
should result in the well-being of all has not diminished nationalism’s hold, and
neither has the Marxist’s view that the world working class would restore the proper
natural essence of humankind, Gellner wrote. From the immense diversity of the
agrarian age to the present, only some cultures have established a political

organization. Nationalism has developed unevenly as the nationalizing cultures have

38 Gellner, Nationalism, 28-29.
39 Gellner, Nationalism, 29.
‘0 Gellner, Nationalism, 29.

82

absorbed multiple local cultures. Some groups got there first. A few cultures have
become nations while others still hope or fight to become nations.41

The shifting of assumptions during the nineteenth century becomes vivid
when the situation in 1815 and 1914 are compared, Gellner explained. How recent
the conversion of a political organization into a nation is can be seen in the political
divisions established at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. There, the map of EurOpe
was redrawn following twenty-five years of the Napoleonic wars. Territory was
divided among Romanov, Habsburg and Ottoman. No consideration was given to
culture, ethnicity, or language similarities—they were politically irrelevant. Europe
was carved up according to principles of empire, kingdom, and estate, with little or no
objection.42 Nationalism was thoroughly ignored in 1815, yet taken for granted in
1914. But in the course of one hundred years, nationalism had become dominant in the
political and literary imagination, even if it had not accomplished much politically.
By World War I, nationalism had achieved the status of a fundamental and natural role
in politics. As Gellner wrote, “Come 1918, the crucial standing of nationalism as a
principle of political legitimacy is as self evident as it had been irrelevant in 1815.
The moral victory of the principle was nearly complete: very few dared raise their

voices against it.”43 Although the system of states drawn without political regard for

4' Gellner, Nationalism, 31-36.
42 Gellner, Nationalism, 40
‘3 Gellner, Nationalism, 43.

83

 

culture existed for nearly one hundred years, the system drawn at Versailles in 1918
with a concern for national, political self-determination collapsed in a generation.44
Gellner proposed three stages of human morality corresponding to changes in
thinking about nationalism: “my station and its duties,” “universalistic individualism”
and “roots.” Stage one, “my station and its duties,” correSponds to the non-national
period in human history during which identity is linked to a place in a stable,
hierarchical social order marked by suspicion and oppression. During this period
culture did not determine political organizational units.45 This ancient regime was
overturned by the ethic of universalistic individualism in—stage two of human
morality—an egalitarian Enlightenment marked by reason. Obligations and
fulfillment came from shared humanity and not from status.46 The Enlightenment
argument over whether shared humanity rests on a capability of sympathy with other’s
pain and pleasure as sentient humans, or on shared reason, is blind to culture.
Philosopher David Hume’s formulation of the argument casts humans as sharing
sensitivity while philosopher Immanuel Kant’s formulation is reason. The arguments
of the Enlightenment in support of a universalistic individualism helped to upstage,
but not to completely defeat, the ethic of “my station and its duties.”47 The third stage

of morality, “roots,” comes from the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment.“

 

‘4 Gellner, Nationalism, 43.
45 Gellner, Nationalism, 63.
‘6 Gellner, Nationalism, 63.
‘7 Gellner, Nationalism, 64.
‘3 Gellner, Nationalism, 65.

84

 

Romanticism began in literature as a reaction to the intrusion of reason into
personal love and sexuality. Romanticism puts an emphasis on feelings, the
imagination and the uniqueness of individuals and the cultural groups to which they
belong. Romanticism differentiates among people by specific cultural differences.
During the course of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Romanticism spread into
scholarship and from private concerns to political concerns.49 The Enlightenment
arguments value universal human reason. For Kant, the ability to reason differentiates
human beings from other living things, breaking the assumption of hierarchy and
forming the basis of morality. For Hume, the feelings of an impartial observer form
the basis of morality and universal htunanityfi0 The Romantic reaction to the
egalitarian, cosmopolitan Enlightenment values feeling and cultural specificity and
links emotions to specific cultural communities where sentiments are shared by
members of the culture, but not by those outside.“ The reason of the Enlightenment
did not and could not create borders. The sentiment of Romanticism could not help
but create borders. As Gellner explained, “Rationality cannot, simply cannot, define
the membership of exclusive clubs: feelings can. Nations, unlike the brotherhood of
man favoured by the Enlightenment, are exclusive clubs.”52

Philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder is exemplary of this Romantic reaction.

In Herder’s view, humanity is composed of nation/cultures and the essence and value

 

‘9 Gellner, Nationalism, 68.
5° Gellner, Nationalism, 66.
5' Gellner, Nationalism, 67.
52 Gellner, Nationalism, 68.

85

of a nation/culture grows out of their specificity.53 The Herderian cult, praising
diversity and opposing the one singular universal reasoning human, was modest in the
beginning. It resisted French cultural imperialism and British commercialism and
empiricism. The inclusion of Darwin into the Romantic scholarship and science gave
it a boost, because if man is merely another animal, then it is difficult to suggest
reason as a differentiating factor.54

Philosopher Immanuel Nietzche took up the issues drawing on biological and
Romantic work. Gellner explained, “The community was to be not merely cultural,
but also biologically distinctive: it was not merely to defend and protect its own
cultural specificity; it was to affirm it politically with an aggressiveness which was
more of an end than a means, which was the expression and precondition of true
vitality.”55 The explosive potential of Nietzche’s work lay in the message of a
biologically distinct culture in need of defense from universalism, a secular form of
the old religion, coinciding with the peak of the economic distress produced by
advancing industrialism/capitalism. The reaction to the distress, against the
universalism, turned to agrarian martial values equating wealth and land, and
nationalism had a powerful appeal.56 As Gellner wrote:

There was a groundswell against this distress and against the universalist

ideology claiming to validate it, a reaction which turned toward the old

agrarian martial values, and which retained the agrarian equation of wealth and

 

53 Gellner, Nationalism, 69.
5‘ Gellner, Nationalism, 69.
55 Gellner, Nationalism, 69.

86

land (Lebensraum). In such a context the appeal of nationalism was powerful

indeed. The first half of the twentieth century witnessed the simultaneous

presence of all these factors and, indeed, their political expression.57

Cultures define and create nations. Cultures have nations and not the reverse,
as nationalists proclaim. A culture and homogeneity replaces a diversity of cultures
and then becomes significant politically.58 The emotional linkage of land and wealth
in Romantic literature spread, confronted the actual, miserable conditions, and
provided a political solution. The answer for those in distressing conditions was to
form their own nation, occupy their own land and form their own state, so as to have
the wealth to alleviate their distress. At the same time they returned to their roots to
find genuine fulfillment.

Instead of an awakening to an awareness of a similarity long dormant and deep
in the psyche, which demanded that like kind be with like kind of human being to
explain nationalism, Gellner proposed a theory of nationalism that includes the
inevitability of certain social conditions. His theory shows an awareness of the
contingencies connected to those social conditions.

A huge multiplicity of local cultures in an agrarian society was replaced by one
literate high culture. A stable, hierarchical social organization was disrupted. The one
literate high culture controlled bureaucracy and technological growth. This culture

was transmitted through an education system made necessary by the changing nature

 

56 Gellner, Nationalism, 71.
57 Gellner, Nationalism, 71.
53 Gellner, Nationalism, 69.

87

of work brought about by technological change. Changes in work required
occupational mobility, and mobility demanded a kind of equality. Enlightenment’s
reason required universal individualism, and the Romantic reaction to it insisted that
fulfillment came from feeling, and that feeling was shared within a culture. In effect,
cultural similarity created a place in the world that provided personal meaning through
shared feelings. Loyalty to, and identification with, like kind in a nation fell between
either universal reason or universal religion and the huge multiplicity of the agrarian
past. Changes from stability to growth, the rise of centralized bureaucracies, changes
in the nature of work, and the demand for a centralized education system—to sustain a
literate high culture able to communicate in a context-free script language that was
necessary for work—made nationalism for some cultures inevitable and doomed it for
others.
Hobsbawm

Historian Eric Hobsbawm traced the origins of the term “nation” to discover
how recent the terminology of equating nation, culture, and state was. He found that
the 1908 New English Dictionary pointed out that the older meaning of the word
nation focused on an ethnic unit, and that recent use (in 1908) stressed “the notion of
political unity and independence.”59 The political use of the term began to have
coherence a third of the way into the nineteenth century. As Hobsbawm noted, “the
people” and “nation” were being used in a way that recalled the revolutions in what

would become the United States and France. He wrote, “The primary meaning of

 

59 Oxford English Dictionary, vol. vii, cited s.v. in Erie Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 18

88

‘nation’, and the one most frequently ventilated in the literature, was political. It
equated ‘the people’ and the state in the manner of the American and French
Revolutions.”60

In the political discussion in the North American colonies and then in
discussions of the whole political body in the United States, the preferred terminology
was, Hobsbawm wrote, “the public, the people, the union, public welfare, or the
community, in order to avoid the term ‘nation’ against the rights of the federated
states.”51 In the French usage it became “one and indivisible”—a body of sovereign
citizens forming a state that was linked to territory. The equation quickly became
nation = state = people in a bounded territory and implied a multiple number of such
units. It did not yet carry the charge of a shared birth into ethnicity or language.62 In
revolutionary terms, the use of nation was a democratic one, although learning French
was one way to become French.

Two different uses of the concept of nation were at play during the middle of
the nineteenth century. One concept of nation was revolutionary and democratic and
emerged from the revolutions. The second concept of nation was nationalist. As
Hobsbawm explained, the same word, “nation,” referred to both revolutionary and
democratic, and nationalist, in the equation of state = nation = people. For
Nationalists a prior cultural community differentiated one unit from another. In the

revolutionary and democratic view, the central point is the sovereign citizen.

 

6° Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, l8.
5' Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 18.
62 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 18-19-20.

89

It was F reidrich List who clearly formulated the liberal idea of the nation that
was usually taken for granted, and it involved a size threshold. Only Federalist
Alexander Hamilton, who provided List with inspiration, had discussed the links
among nation, state, and economy. For Hamilton, the term “nation” referred only to
the economy and he pushed for a national bank, debt, tariffs, and excise. List argued
that a nation must have a large enough and exclusive territory be of a sufficient size, a
large population, and natural resources.63

Nations were expected to arise from expansion and unification as a step along
the path to universal human unity—from family to tribe to country to region to nation
to global.64 It was also widely accepted that nations would be heterogeneous.
Hobsbawm suggests that the lack of discussion of nationalism in the liberal era can be
attributed to the absence of electoral politics. He wrote, “Observers like [John Stuart]
Mill and [Ernest] Renan were relaxed enough about the elements which made up
‘national sentiment’—ethnicity—in spite of the Victorians’ passionate preoccupation
with ‘race’—language, religion, territory, history, culture and the rest—because
politically it did not matter much, as yet, whether one or the other among these was
regarded as more important than the rest.”65 Many of the core assumptions about
nationalism of the liberal age, 1830-1880, would change drastically by the First World
War, in part because of the rise of national slogans to masses of supporters of political

movements, Hobsbawm explained.

 

‘53 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, p. 30. Hobsbawm relied on Friedrich List, The National
System of Political Economy (London, 1885), 174-176

64 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 32-33.

90

Hobsbawm pointed out that the various ways in which people might have
thought of themselves as part of communities larger than a local one were not
necessarily related to a unit of land politically organized as a nation is understood
today. A shared language came to be considered a unifying factor more recently than
today’s nationalists believe. In fact, national languages are the opposite of what the
nationalists’ suppose them to be: They are artificial constructs and not the primordial
basis of the national mind and culture. A national language usually is one idiom
chosen as the standard and homogenizing language from many that are spoken within
the national boundary. Thus, language could not be the criterion for nation. Even for
the literate few, it was necessary to choose a vernacular over a holy classical language
that was adequate for small elites to use in administrative bureaucracies, literature, and
intellectual or public debate.66

The argument for the unifying character of language was invented by
intellectuals and did not, according to Hobsbawm, rise up from the common folk. He
wrote, “In fact, the mystical identification of nationality with a sort of platonic idea of
the language, existing behind and above all its variant and imperfect versions, is much
more characteristic of the ideological construction of nationalist intellectuals, of whom
Herder is the prophet, than of the actual grassroots users of the idiom. It is a literary

and not an existential concept.”67

 

‘55 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 43.
‘56 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 47, 54-56.
67 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 57.

91

Even though language, in a Herderian sense, would indirectly become central
to the modern definitions of nationalists and to popular perceptions of nationalism, in
fact, it did not actually become so important the way nationalists have claimed.
Rather, the language’s use by a small number of elite administrators, the use by
printers, and the use in public education made the chosen tongue the language of the
nation-state. According to Hobsbawm, this is what happened to most European
languages between the late eighteenth and early twentieth century. He follows
Benedict Anderson’s reasoning to argue that language was a unifying cultural element
that created a community of intercommunicating elite, and it did not matter whether
this was a minority if they had political clout. The official language of the elite
became the actual language of the nation through public education.68

Among the characteristics claimed by nationalists to support an up-from-the-
bottom nationalism—language, territory and ethnicity—none has been shown to be
sufficient for the formation of a nation. The often-repeated conclusion is that states
precede nations. As Hobsbawm points out, the United States of America is one of the
premier examples of that claim. “The USA and Australia are obvious examples of
nation-states all of whose specific national characteristics and criteria of nationhood

have been established since the late eighteenth century, and indeed could not have

existed before the foundation of the respective state and country.”69

 

53 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 59-63. As an example, he points out that in 1789 only
about half the people in France spoke French, only 12% or so spoke it correctly, and almost no one
spoke it in the north or the south. 60.

59 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 78.

92

There was a novelty to the modern state, the states formed in the wake of the
United States and French revolutions. Hobsbawm wrote, “It was defined as a
(preferably continuous and unbroken) territory over all of whose inhabitants it ruled,
and separated by clearly distinct frontiers of borders from other such territories.”70 The
inhabitants were ruled directly, and agents of the state reached out to the most remote
village, the most humble resident. Hobsbawm continued, “And increasingly it found
itself having to take notice of the opinions of its subjects or citizens, because the state
needed their practical consent or activity in other ways, e. g. as tax-payers or potential
conscript soldiers.”71 Throughout the nineteenth century, contact between government
and individuals increased, linking them daily as never before via mail carriers, police
officers, school teachers, census-takers and those who registered births, deaths, and
marriages.

Two political problems faced the new governments in the era of revolution,
liberalism, democracy, and the rise of working class movements and nationalism. One
problem was administrative. The establishment of a machine of administration raised
the issue of a written and spoken language. The second problem concerned the loyalty
of those being administered by the state and their identification with the state. The
state and ruling classes found it necessary to compete with rivals for the support of the
lower orders in a time of increasingly unlimited electoralization. Hobsbawm wrote,

It became equally obvious, at least from the 18805, that wherever the common

man was given the most nominal participation in politics as a citizen—with the

 

7° Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 80.

93

rarest exception the common woman remained excluded—he could no longer

be relied on to give automatic loyalty and support to his betters or to the state.

Especially when the classes to which he belonged were historically novel, and

hence lacked a traditional place in the scheme of things.72
Hobsbawm noted the idea of patriotism was state-based rather than nationalist in the
revolutionary popular idea of patriotism because it related to the sovereign people.
That is, the state exercising power in the name of its people. Historic continuity,
ethnicity, and language were irrelevant. The Americans, the Dutch in 1783 and the
makers of the French Revolution all used patriot to refer to people who loved their
country and wanted to renew it by revolution. Their loyalty was thought to be to a
nation created by choice. The higher loyalty became the loyalty to the chosen,
politically created unit.73 Hobsbawm explained, “The revolutionary concept of the
nation as constituted by the deliberate political option of its potential citizens is, of
course, still preserved in a pure form in the USA. Americans are those who wish to
be.”74

Turning subjects into citizens, “democratizing politics” in Hobsbawm’s phrase,
seems to have spawned populism. He wrote, “For if ‘the country’ is in some way
‘mine.’ then it is more readily seen as preferable to those of foreigners, especially if

these lack the rights and freedoms of the true citizen.”75 The extension of the

 

7' Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 80.
72 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 83.
73 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 87.
74 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 88.
75 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 88.

94

franchise also could contribute to the legitimacy of the state and could reinforce or
even create state patriotism.

At the same time, nationalisms were developing that were opponents of state
patriotism.76 During the nineteenth century, some European governments approached
nationalism as a political force separate from the state and state patriotism. At the
same time, nationalism could become an asset if it would merge with state patriotism
and lend it an emotional note.77

States and regimes had every reason to reinforce, if they could, state patriotism
with the sentiments and symbols of community (however they may have arisen) and to
concentrate them upon themselves. As it happened, the time when the
democratization of politics made it essential to ‘educate our masters,’ to ‘make
Italians,’ to turn ‘peasants into Frenchmen,’ and attach all to nation and flag, was also
the time when popular national superiority preached by the new pseudo-science of
racism became easier to mobilize. For the period from 1880 to 1914 was also that of
the greatest mass migration within and between states yet known, of imperialism and
of growing international rivalries ending in world war.78

The nationalisms that were to dominate world politics and serve as a
foundation for two world wars emerged toward the end of the century. Although the
nationalisms were sometimes attached to state-patriotism—a chosen nation of rights of

individuals—they had striking dissimilarities because their loyalty was not to the

 

76 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 89.
77 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 90.
78 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 91.

95

chosen nation/country but to a different version of that country.79 Bureaucratic
organization and technical developments required the standardization of people and
included a need for literacy that led to education and a national language.80 For the
promoters of the changing nationalism, language was an increasingly crucial
component of nationality.

From 1840, language differences had played an international political role, and
language was something that could be counted.81 When bureaucratic states asked the
language question on censuses, everyone was forced to choose a linguistic nationality.
Hobsbawm wrote,

The Hapsburgs put off the language question until after national tempers, so

visibly overheated in the 18603, had, as they thought, cooled down. They

would start counting in 1880. What nobody quite appreciated was that asking
such a question would itself generate linguistic nationalism. Each census was
to become a battlefield between nationalities, and the increasingly elaborate
attempts of the authorities to satisfy the contending parties failed to do so.82

From historic emergence in Western Europe and the United States of America,
Nationalism expanded and transformed during the nineteenth century. The
nationalism of the mid-nineteenth century, for the most part, had a minimal size of
country in mind when it spoke of the new nation-state and looked to 1789 as a model.

Whereas early in the century, nationalism had been based among communities of the

 

79 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 93
8° Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 95.
8' Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 98.

96

educated that crossed political boundaries, nationalism began stressing cultural and
linguistic community, and it had a sense of historic mission.83 The form of nationalism
that dominated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century abandoned the
threshold principle, which required a certain size territory for the nation state.
Ethnicity and language gained tremendous importance as a basis of the new nation
seeking a state. A shift in sentiment followed within the existing nation-states that
cemented nation and flag with the political right. Hobsbawm wrote there was “a sharp
shift to the political right of nation and flag, for which the term ‘nationalism’ was
actually invented in the last decade(s) of the nineteenth century.”34 This drifi in the
imaginings of nationalists was accompanied by a transformation in the concept of race,
huge migrations of people, and increasing democratization of politics.

German Romanticism had a tremendous influence in Europe beginning in the
late eighteenth century.“ Hobsbawm wrote, “Europe had been swept by the romantic
passion for the pure, simple and uncorrupted peasantry, and for this folkloric
rediscovery of ‘the people’, the vernacular languages it spoke were crucial.”36
However, this emphasis on the common folk was usually carried out by the elite and
was not part of the political thinking until the end of the century.87 A large number of

national movements stressed language and cultural similarity as a foundation for

 

82 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 100.

83 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 100-102.

34 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 102.

35 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 103.

8" Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 103. The elite white Protestant males of the United States

were sent to German universities during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and would have
been influenced by this thinking

97

nation. This rationale for seeking a state was widely seen in 1914, but it barely existed
among some groups or did not exist at all among other groups in 1870. The
nationalists movements of the period included Armenians, Georgians, Lithuanians,
Zionist Jews, non-Zionist Jews, Macedonians, Albanians, Ruthenians, Croats,
Basques, Catalans, Welsh, and Flemish.88 These movements were aided by huge
migrations, theories of evolution, social Darwinism and changing conceptions of
race};9

During the nineteenth century, the concept of race was transformed. A
complex stratification of human beings based on physical characteristics with a
foundation in skin coloration was elaborated by social scientists90 and in popular
culture as the migrations brought people who were different together. Race, language
and nation were in various combinations commensurate. One important way race and
language interacted was in the overlapping emphasis on the importance of the purity of
language with the purity of the race.9| By 1904, language was widely seen as having a
political effect, and in practice the concepts “nation” and “race” were used as
synonyms. Hobsbawm wrote, “Thus before the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale of
1904, a French writer observed, agreement between the two countries had been

dismissed as impossible because of the ‘hereditary enmity’ between the two races.”92

 

87 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 104.

88 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 105-106.

89 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 107-108.

90 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 108.

9‘ Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 108.

92 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 108-109. The development of racialist historical theories
in English and German universities furthered the legitimacy of the equation of race and nation.

98

He goes on to describe the links between the developing fin de siécle social strata and
the importance of language to “the lesser examination passing classes”?3

Hobsbawm detailed the links among class, race and nation that came together
near the end of the nineteenth century.94 Language ——written public language —— in
Europe, provided a practical advantage to those who mastered it. The language used
at work and taught in school was important to the life chances of the expansion of the
middle classes from the bottom. (Hobsbawm calls these the middle strata, the lower
middle class, and the lesser examination-passing classes.) The elite would have
learned the not-yet-offrcial language, the language of business and government, and
possibly a local language as well. The manual workers and the lowest strata of
peasants spoke a local dialect and had no need of a written language.95 However,
those people who had achieved a modest elevation from the level of workers and
peasants—an achievement based on schooling—were those who fought for linguistic
nationalism. Hobsbawm explained, “The battle-lines of linguistic nationalism were
manned by provincial journalists, schoolteachers and aspiring subaltem officials.”96

The transition involved one vernacular language becoming the language used

in schools and bureaucracies. The process and the struggle were different in different

 

Hobsbawm calls this a fashion of the times to wildly generalize about and equate race and nation, but it
did have an elite academic foundation in the racialist historical theories. Additionally, American
popular cultural developed and spread race and nation equivalencies during the nineteenth century. See
Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919 (New York: W.W. Norton
and Company, 1987); Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial
Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981): Robert J. C. Young
Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, (New York: Routledge, 1995).

93 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 118.

9‘ Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 112-130.

95 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 114-1 15.

99

places; however, the insecure social status of the lower-middle strata made political
protection for a specific vernacular in the form of nationalist claims appealing.97 At
the same time, claims of racial and linguistic purity gave a combined boost to
nationalist claims.98 If language were understood as reflecting the race, then the purity
of the race and language must be protected from mixing with any others.

Hobsbawm places these claims in the lower-middle strata, the petty-bourgeois
radical right, which based its superiority on racial purity, demonstrated by a unique
language.99 Hobsbawm wrote,

Uncertainty about their status and definition, the insecurity of large strata

situated between the unquestionable sons and daughters of manual toil and the

unquestionedmembers of the upper and middle classes, overcompensation by
claims to uniqueness and superiority threatened by someone or other — these
provided links between the modest middle strata and a militant nationalism,
which may almost be definable as a response to such threats - from workers,
from foreign states and individuals, from immigrants, from the capitalists and
financiers so readily identifiable with the Jews, who were also seen as the
revolutionary agitators. For these middle strata saw themselves as embattled

and endangered. '00

 

96 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 1 17.

97 Hobsbawm, Nations andNationalism, 118-119.
98 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 120.

99 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 120.

'00 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 120-121.

100

Hobsbawm did not specify a precise class level where discontent would be found. He
did claim that in the politicization of the lower middle class, nationalism became a
chauvinistic, imperialist and xenophobic movement of the radical right. Previously,
nationalism had been associated with the liberal left.101

In other words, class interests combined with race and language claims.
Certainly, the powerful elite in the established nation-states welcomed the enthusiasm
from the middle, because the state was competing with other states. However, the
passions of the middle were not necessarily to be manipulated from above.
Hobsbawm wrote, “Few governments, even before 1914, were as chauvinist as the
nationalist ultras who urged them on. And, as yet, there were no governments which
had been created by the ultras.”‘°2

Although the lower-middle-class, discontented ultra-nationalists did not
control government and government did not control the ultra-nationalists, the lesser
middle classes still needed a state. If they lacked a state, they aspired to one
comprised of their own kind. If they lived in a nation-state, nationalism gave them a
social identity, which Hobsbawm saw as similar to proletarian class identity. He
wrote,

One might suggest that the self-definition of the lower middle classes—both

that section which was helpless as artisans and small shop-keepers and social

strata which were largely as novel as the workers, given the unprecedented

expansion of higher education white collar and professional occupations—was

 

'01 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 121.

101

not so much as a class, but as the body of the most zealous and loyal, as well as

the most ‘respectable’ sons and daughters of the fatherland. ‘03

However, people could have more than one sort of identification and could be
simultaneously attached to class, religion, and nationality. Class politics could lead to
nationalistic pursuits, and social and national demands could be linked together in the
desire for change.104 The relationship between social movements and national
movements is full of overlapping claims and calls to the mass of people as members of
a nation and as members of a social strata.105 National feeling can ofien be expressed
as an aspect of the conflict between rich and poor, and the themes of social change
were not separate from those of nationalism as they became dominant. ‘06 In other
words, national consciousness cannot be neatly separated from class consciousness,
and the development of national consciousness is not necessarily at the expense of
social consciousness.107
Gellner and Hobsbawm

Gellner placed the relationship among race/ethnicity, class and nationalism
slightly differently. He put a sharper point on the necessity of the combination of class
and cultural differences to become politically successful. Ethnic groups did not
become nationalist in a stable agrarian system, and classes did not overturn

government when they did not define themselves by ethnicity and culture. Gellner

 

‘02 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 122.
‘03 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 122.
‘04 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 125.
'05 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 124-126.
'06 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 128-129.

102

wrote, “Only when a nation became a class, a visible and unequally distributed
category in an otherwise mobile system, did it become political conscious and activist.
Only when a class happened to be (more or less) a ‘nation’ did it turn from being a
class-in-itself into a class-for-itself, or a nation-for-itself. Neither nations nor classes
seem to be political catalysts: only nation-classes or class-nations are such.”108

Neither Gellner nor Hobsbawm deal substantively with the specifics of race
theories; however, both rested portions of their arguments on ethnically-based claims
in which ethnicity and culture are interdependent bases for nationalism. In Gellner’s
analysis, class and culturally defined nationalism is a political catalyst. Hobsbawm
detailed a two-way relationship between class status and language use, where language
was linked to ethnicity. Social scientists in Europe and the United States, and the
popular mass-produced printed material circulating in the United States, participated
in the construction of race during the nineteenth century.
Racial Theories in the United States of America

Racialist theories dominated common sense in the late nineteenth century.
These theories included a hierarchy of qualities that made the Anglo-Saxon-Teuton
people most fit to rule. This commonsense view was reflected by historians and was
apparent in politics, literature, popular periodicals and schoolbooks in the United
States. Scientists provided legitimacy and credibility for racial theories, and political

debates were waged in racial terms. It was widely assumed that the Anglo-Saxon-

 

‘07 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 130.
‘03 Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 121.

103

Teuton would eventually replace all inferior races. '09 Scholar Reginald Horsman
explained, “The Anglo-Saxonism of the last half of the [nineteenth] century was no
benign expansionism, though it used the rhetoric of redemption, for it assumed that
one race was destined to lead, others to serve—one race to flourish, many to die. The
world was to be transformed not only by the strength of better ideas but by the power
of a superior race.”l ‘0

Jumbled and contested conceptions of the links among language, race and
nation during the nineteenth century resulted in a dominant understanding by the start
of the twentieth. Many historians in the United States in the 18805 were adherents to
Teutonic-germ theory. It held that a vigorous race of people had come from Central
Asia in ancient time, literally carrying an institutional germ intheir blood to the
German forests, where they had shown a unique spirit of freedom. The migration of
the Teutonic tribes to Britain in the fifih and sixth century provided the seed for
Anglo-Saxon political institutions to flourish following Norman feudalism. Not fully
developed, the seed was regenerated after being transported to what would become the
United States and grew anew as the New England town meeting.I “ However, the
germ carrying the ability to create republican institutions had not always. been

completely developed. Rather, it matured over time and through experience, to be

 

'09 Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny; Painter, Standing at Armageddon; Young, Colonial
Desire; Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of The Frontier in the Age of
Industrialization (New York: HarperPerennial, 1994).

“0 Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 303.

1“ Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny; Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The ”Objectivity
Question " and the American Historical Profession (New York: Press Syndicate of the University of

104

fully developed for the first time with the establishment of the United States. The
theory allowed for the possibility that other races might catch up, but it would take a
long time.‘ ‘2 These racial theories provided the basis for political discussion.

Scholar Reginald Horsman explained, “The identity of race and language was
taken for granted, and race was exalted as the basis of nation.”1 '3 Horsman continued,
“And the Americans were able to take pride in a westward advance which had passed
beyond England across the Atlantic to press on relentlessly across the American
Continent, eventually to complete the grand trek by bringing civilization back to the
Asian homeland.”l '4 Enlightenment American revolutionary ideals had changed from
hope for the progress of the human race into dreams of racial destiny for one superior
race to advance civilization, and nature had decreed it, Horsman wrote.l '5

Anglo-Saxonist historians began a body of work that rewrote the foundations
of the American Revolution, expressing in a variety of ways regret over the split
between Anglo-Saxon race brothers in the United States and England.“‘5 The hold of
racial destiny as an explanation for American institutions was modified by the work of
Frederick Jackson Turner. His frontier theory suggested that the availability of free
land was part of the explanation for the exceptional nature of American institutions.‘ '7

Herbert Baxter Adams, a Johns Hopkins historian, was a supporter of Teutonic-germ

 

Cambridge, 1995); Young, Colonial Desire; Slotkin, The Fatal Environment; Painter, Standing at
Armageddon.

“2 Painter, Standing at Armageddon, 151-152.

1 '3 Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 35.
“4 Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 38.
”5 Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 62,67.
“5 Novick, That Noble Dream, 81-82.

105

theory, and his reputation among professional historians sank as Turner’s frontier
thesis rose.l ‘3 However, while academic historians were beginning to incorporate
Turner’s thinking, in the 18905 and beyond, popular culture and politics maintained
racial assumptions.‘ ‘9

Racial assumptions were the norm among the elite and were not uncommon in
any arena. John Hay, President McKinley’s secretary of state, and Elihu Root,
President Taf’t’s secretary of war, were among many who came to see the world in
terms of a global biological struggle. Democrat Woodrow Wilson and Republican
Teddy Roosevelt were not alone in urging Anglo-Saxons to have children in order for
the race to maintain leadership.120 Wilson believed government worked best when the
qualified few were running it.'21 In a manifestation of class fear, James Lowell, Henry
Baxter Adams and Nation editor E. L. Godkin called for the members of the so-called
better classes to return to political leadership. Godkin suggested doubling the size of
the standing Army to meet the threat of what he called the dangerous classes. During
the 18805 and 18905, businessmen helped finance armories and the National Guard so
cities could be protected from mobs of strikers.‘22

Reflecting the assumptions of the upper classes, John Hay’s popular 1884

novel The Bread Winners preached civil service reform—goveMent by the educated.

 

”7 Novick, That Noble Dream, 88; Slotkin, The Fatal Environment.
”8 Novick, That Noble Dream, 88.

“9 Painter, Standing at Armageddon, 141-169; Slotkin, The Fatal Environment; Lears, F ables of
Abundance.

'20 Alan Dawley, Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The Belnap Press of Harvard University, 1991), 107-109.

121 Painter, Standing at Armageddon, 259.

106

In his novel, Hay portrayed the need for the white elite Anglo-Saxon upper class to
regain control of the government from the corrupt Irish and German immigrants who
pandered to the lower classes. Hay also blamed outsiders for labor problems and
threatened that the poor would invade homes. Implicitly, The Bread Winners carried
the message that the naturally superior rich should make all of the decisions for
society.123

From politicians to novelists, in school rooms and scientific laboratories, in
popular magazines as well as academic writing, it was widely assumed around the turn
of the century in the United States that one superior race would eventually govern
everywhere and replace the inferior races. Katherine Verdery’s suggestions about
ways to consider nationalism124 can more thoroughly incorporate the racialist
assumptions of the turn of the century into the thinking about nationalism.
Verdery

Scholar Katherine Verdery took “nation” as an operator in a social
classification system that established grounds for authority and legitimacy through the
categories it makes seem natural. “Nation” has had many different meanings and all
of them have been used to sort people, she wrote. The criteria for sorting, however,
changes with time and location. The symbol—nation—links subjects to states and
distinguishes between them, she wrote. It works as a symbol because its meaning has

been ambiguous and it invokes sentiments that have been formed during decades of

 

‘22 Painter, Standing at Armageddon, 10, 21-23.
'23 Painter, Standing at Armageddon, 27.

107

use. Verdery said that nationalism is both a political use of the symbol and the
sentiment that draws people to respond to the symbol. She wrote, “Nationalism is a
quintessentially homogenizing, differentiating, or classifying discourse: one that aims
its appeals at people presumed to have certain things in common as against people
thought not to have any mutual connections.”'25 It has operated in two major
meanings: citizenship and ethnicity. In the first sense, the nation is a collective
sovereignty involving individual citizen’s political participation. In the second
sense—ethnicity—the nation is a collective of individuals who share a belief in a
common language, culture, history, and perhaps other defining material
attachments!26

Verdery suggested the importance of determining which sense of the concept
was being used!27 Additionally, shared ethnicity and citizenship, though frequently
used, should not be assumed. Her advice was threefold:

1) Determine the meaning of the construct nation from the context of its use.

2) Treat nation as a symbol within a social context in which groups compete to
control its meaning.

3) Examine the assumptions of meaning for the terms that have been claimed

to define nation and nationalism!28

 

'24 Katherine Verdery, “Whither ‘Nation’ and ‘Nationalism’ in Mapping the Nation, Gopal
Balakrishnan ed. (London: Verso, 1996) 226-234.

‘25 Verdery, “Whither,” 227.

‘26 Verdery, “Whither,” 227.

‘27 Verdery, “Whither,” 227. From a historian’s perspective this would be the avoidance of what is
called present mindedness. That is, taking a current meaning and projecting it back into the past.

‘28 Verdery, “Whither,” 227-228.

108

When national identity is discussed, the second term—identity—is usually left
unexarnined, Verdery wrote. Identity, however, can be assumed in many ways and
national identity can be understood on at least on two levels. One meaning level is the
individual’s sense of self as separately having or being a certain type of national. A
second meaning level is a particular collective whole in relation to similar others.
Verdery wrote, “National identity thus exists at two levels: the individual’s sense of
self as national, and the identity of the collective whole in relation to others of like
kind.”129 There is a paradox of meaning. Verdery wrote that the identity in national
identity can mean both the same, identical, alike and unique, special and only. These
meanings can simultaneously work to homogenize and differentiate!30

Verdery’s thinking is made clearer with a more complex understanding of the
concept of individual. Before identity, which individuals possess, there were
individuals. Individuals have only come to have identities of any kind since the
historical occurrence of the idea of an individual, at which time the individual was
conceived as having the ability to possess himself.

It is the status of owning one’s own labor that allows the move to become an
individual. According to scholar C. B. Macpherson, the idea of possessive
individualism is part of the emergence of the idea of the individual. The individual
was one who was able to buy, and therefore possess, his own labor. He could own
himself and therefore was an individual. Additionally, because the individual’s own

labor is his property, an individual’s accumulation of property does not necessarily

 

‘29 Verdery, “Whither,” 229.

109

entail a social responsibility. Further, it was only those few who were rational who
could possess property because it was rational to accumulate!31 In his analysis of
John Locke, Macpherson wrote, “The man without property in things loses that full
proprietorship of his own person which was the basis of his equal natural rights. . . .
Civil society is established to protect unequal possessions, which have already in a
state of nature given rise to unequal rights.”I32

Nations, as well as individuals, are considered to have identities. Nations are
discussed as individuals. As Verdery pointed out, at least since Johann Gottfried von
Herder, nations have been conceived as being like individuals with souls, wills,
missions, births, lineages, and cycles that are contained in territorial bodies!33 How
then, Verdery asks, does the homology between the nation and the individual become
natural?134 One way to think about this process is by defining nationalism as the
sentiments that take the nation as an object of devotion, and to take the concept of
nationness as the daily practices that produces a feeling of belonging, so that the
variety of practices in time build up devotion!”

The representations in the mass media can serve as this type of practice. An

individual participates in the practice as he or she interacts with the symbol and is then

 

‘30 Verdery, “Whither,” 229.

‘3‘ CB. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1962): Louis Dumont, “Religion, Politics, and Society in the Individualistic
Universe,” Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (London,
1970), p. 31-45; For elaboration on and disagreement with Macpherson see Joseph H. Carens (ed.)
Democracy and Possessive Individualism: The Intellectual Legacy of C. B. Macpherson (Albany, New
York: State University of New York Press, 1993).

‘32 Macpherson, “Possessive Individualism,” 231.

133 Verdery, “Whither,” 229.

110

1h:

bu

interpolated as either an included or an excluded member of the nation, as it is being
defined at a particular mediated moment.

Verdery urges scholars to see the nation as a symbol that has taken on different
meanings at different times and contexts and is used by different groups who have
different intents. This opens the way for examining the intentions of different groups
and their conflicts over national character, cultural heritage, the true mission of the
nation, and their contrasting ideas about authenticity. It allows for seeing nation as a
construct whose meaning shifts with the changing balance of social forces. It is
possible to ask what kind of leverage the construct of nation has afforded certain
groups and how ideas about nation and identity are produced and reproduced as central
elements in a political struggle. Additionally, this process of national symbolization
includes a process of rendering invisible some social groups while others are made
visible!36 The violent process includes such things as ethnic cleansing, however,
there are also symbolic ways in which difference is foregrounded and then obliterated.
Verdery notes, “ Notions of purity and contamination, of blood as a carrier of culture,
or of pollution are fundamental to the projects of nation-making?”7

This process is necessary to implement the push toward homogenization, and
the process must be continual. Nations are not only built; they must be continually

built, and part of this process of rebuilding involves the maintenance of the legitimacy

 

‘34 Verdery, “Whither,” 229.
‘35 Verdery, “Whither,” 229.
'36 Verdery, “Whither,” 230.
'37 Verdery, “Whither,” 230.

111

of the state. It is because the claims of nationalists have gaps in their connection to
material reality that it is necessary to have a continual rebuilding and relegitimizing.

The homogenizing process of state-making, described by Gellner’s theory,
provides the foundation to see the state as the frame within which symbolic
conventions are contested and homogenization as basic to the states form of rule. The
state is seen, Verdery wrote, as the, “frame within which symbolic conventions are
established and fought over, legitimacies striven for, group relations and the
distributions associated with them fixed.”‘33 It is from within the frame that visibility
is produced. It is the state-making process that “motivates difference as it inscribes
boundaries, demarcating inside from outside, self from other.”139 The press toward
homogeneity is also a process of exclusion and defining. Institutionalized
commonalty, even as an outcome of an unintentional process, renders visible and
deviant those who do not possess the common feature. When the state institutionalizes
a normative commonalty as a process of state-building, the process creates politically,
materially, significant differences by defining difference in relation to homogenizing
commonalty!40

With the foundation provided by this chapter from the theorists and historians
of nationalism it will be possible to look for the ways in which nation and nationalism
might be used in the texts of the social scientists from diverse disciplines in the

universities in the United States of America. Rather than a template with which to

 

‘33 Verdery, “Whither,” 231.
‘39 Verdery, “Whither,” 231
”0 Verdery, “Whither,” 231.

112

compare each article in the Public Opinion canon, this foundation provides clues to
determine, from the context of the texts, the meanings of nation, nationalism, and
public opinion.

It includes watching for the meaning of nation as a collective sovereignty, in
what Hobsbawm called the revolutionary democratic meaning of the term nation. In
this sense, individual citizens are political participants in a nation formed by choice of
individuals and reason. It may still maintain the meaning first attributed to it in the
United States by Hobsbawm as multiple surrogate terms, sensitive to the individual
states rights. Hobsbawm wrote: “the public, the people, the union, public welfare, or
the community, in order to avoid the term ‘nation’ against the rights of the federated
states.”141 However, with the shifting meaning of race and nation during the nineteenth
century, it will be necessary to watch for ethnic or race assumptions or both, class
assumptions, and gender assumptions along with the meaning of the nation as a
collective sovereignty. It is possible that shared traits, shared historical circumstance,
. national character, or something else might be used to define the individuals who are
also considered sovereign citizens. As Verdery warned, the conceptions are
paradoxical.

Using these clues—derived from the theorists of nationalism—the journal
articles from Harwood Childs’ Public Opinion class that form the public opinion

canon are examined chronologically in the following chapters.

 

14' Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 18.

113

Chapter Four

Harwood Childs’ Public Opinion Syllabus Articles from 1886 tol9l9

In this chapter, following an overview, the articles from Harwood Childs’
Public Opinion class syllabus published between 1886 and 1919 are chronologically
presented and analyzed as they would have appeared to scholars and a more general
and literate reading public. This is not the way in which they were presented to
Childs’ Princeton students in the middle of the 19305, just as the study of public
opinion was getting under way at universities. The students would have read the
articles by topic areas to which they were assigned by Childs based on his
understanding of the field of public opinion.1 The articles are presented
chronologically because this will allow the opportunity to see time related changes in
the discussion of key terms—-—public opinion, nation, race, democracy. The grouping
of articles was in part based on the end of World War 1. While the final article in this
section was written in 1919, the topic is war related. Additionally, other scholars have
seen World War I as marking a social divide.2

The dissention over the meaning of the term “public opinion” is evident from
the earliest articles in Harwood Childs’ syllabus. The articles reveal multiple uses of
the concept of public opinion and its intertwining with nation and race. The articles

from Child’s syllabus were split nearly equally between general circulation magazines

 

' Harwood Childs, A Reference Guide to the Study of Public Opinion (Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1934).
’ Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995).

114

and academic publications. The common man was not portrayed as wise. Nation and
race are used interchangeably.

These articles revealed a palpable underlying worry about the way the world
worked and what could be done to make it work better. Democracy was not working,
although, the press could make democracy work if it were in the hands of the right sort
of men, according to W. T. Stead in 1886. He believed that the newspaper could guide
public opinion.3 The common people were not reasoning or thinking. Therefore,
because public opinion was based on sentiment or prejudice when it should be based
on reason, a few thoughtful men needed to use their influence to promote thinking by
the people, Jeremiah Jenks Opined in 1895.’ Democracy might be unfixable and the
majority of people unable to be led to reason because of the complexity of the modern
world. It was only a few years after Stead and Jenks wrote that E. L. Godkin held out
no hope of improving public opinion, in part because the newspapers were no longer
up to the job.5

Godkin defined two kinds of public opinion. One kind, inherited public
opinion, did not concern him. The important public opinion, according to Godkin,
was the consensus public opinion that acted as a political force. He wrote, “The kind I .
am now talking of is the public opinion, or consensus of opinion, among large bodies

of persons, which acts as a political force, imposing on those in authority certain

 

’ W. T. Stead, “Government by Journalism,” Contemporary Review 49 (May 1886): 653-674.

’ Jeremiah Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion,” American Journal of Sociology 1 (1895-96):
158-169.

’ E. L. Godkin, “The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion,” The Atlantic Monthly 131 (January
1898): 1-15.

115

Pit

enactments, or certain lines of policy.”5 There were no challenges to the assumption
that the Anglo-Saxons had a lead in the progression from barbarity to civilization. In
1910, Walter Shepard predicted the certainty of rule by public opinion in civilized
Anglo-Saxon countries and proposed to settle the definition that public opinion was a
bond agreed on by members of a group. He saw multiple publics.7 It was apparent
from Shepard’s argument that there was an ongoing disagreement about the meaning
of public opinion at the turn of the century. Then there was a turn from worry about
who would or could control the unreasoning public opinion of the mass of recently
enfranchised members of the public to a worry about who was improperly influencing
public opinion.

George Turner worried about the money spent to manufacture public opinion
in a political campaign.’ In 1916, Philip Brown pointed out the chasm between direct
democracy and representative democracy that needed consideration in the discussion
of public opinion.’ Based on the articles published between 1886 and 1919, there was
both something wrong with democracy that could be fixed and an optimism about the
progress being made, at least in Anglo-Saxon countries, which were civilized, in
contrast to un-named savage countries. Additionally, guiding public opinion was both

urged and decried. If public opinion could be directed by good men, that was hopeful

 

’ Godkin, “Growth and Expression of Public Opinion,” 1.
7 Walter J. Shepard, “Public Opinion,” The American Journal of Sociology 15 (1909-10): 32-60.

' George Kibbe Turner, “Manufacturing Public Opinion: The New Art of Making Presidents by
Press Bureau,” McClures 's Magazine 39 (1912): 36-372.

’ Philip Marshall Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” North American Review 204 ( 1916): 691-
704. ’

116

for democracy and the future.'0 However, if instead of natural public opinion, public
opinion was manufactured, that was a worry, according to Turner.ll Then again,
Charles Merriam wrote, if public opinion were manufactured to save democracy, that
was a reason to be proud.|2

Nation and nationalism, like public opinion, lacking fixed definition or theory,
were richly represented in the articles in Childs’ syllabus and were tied to blood-linked
traits, civilization, and sacrifice. Stead saw the press as representing the national
mind.l3 Godkin wrote that the only way to understand another nation was to read its
newspapers.” According to Brown, diplomats needed to be representative of their
nation. He was urging, not that they represent their nation, but rather that the character
of the individual diplomat be representative of the character of the nation. He worried
the American diplomat might become cosmopolitan and therefore devitalized. In
1918, in tune with the widespread racialist assumptions of the time, Melville described
Germans as being born with Teutonic traits, however, similarly to Brown’s devitalized
American, the German could lose his nationality if he settled in another country.”

Race was intertwined with nation in the articles. The link of race was to nation
and not color, and race was a blood connection. For example, Arthur Bullard saw the

Germans, in Germany and in America, as enemies of civilization and Germans in

 

'° Stead, “Government by Joumalism;” Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion;” Godkin, “The
Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.”

" Turner, “Manufacturing Public Opinion.”

'2 Charles E. Merriam, “American Publicity in Italy,” The American Political Science Review 13
(November 1919): 541-555.

” Stead, “Government by Journalism,” 654.

" Godkin, “Growth and Expression of Public Opinion,” 6.

117

America carrying political sympathy in their blood that would ally them with the
German nation.” He called the British and the Americans Anglo-Saxon cousins.’7 In
1901, in a study of election returns, Walter Hamm reassured his readers that there
would be no future threat to the purity of the ballot because there would not be another
dilution of the electorate." It was the Anglo-Saxon countries that were on the verge of
having rule by public opinion." Anglo-Saxon was used casually by Edward Porritt in
1910.20 There was an underlying assumption of the progress of the race in F. Stuart
Chapin’s argument for measurement in 1912.2| The idea of racial progress was based
on an assumption of racial hierarchies. William F. Ogburn and Delvin Peterson said
the presence of different racial groups made governing difficult.22

The articles from Childs’ syllabus published between 1886 and 1919 reveal
multiple meanings of the concepts of public opinion and nation, as well as race bound
with the idea of nation. They reveal assumptions about the social order and individual
citizens. The authors’ overriding concern was with control. Sometimes control was
urged by the authors’. Other times the authors’ worried about who was doing the
controlling. Almost always, the common persons, the mass of citizens, were presumed

to be unreasoning or too easily led.

 

'5 Lewis Melville, “German Propaganda Societies,” Quarterly Review 230 (1918): 70-88.

“ Arthur Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” Atlantic Monthly 1 19 (April 1917): 495.

'7 Bullard, “ Democracy and Diplomacy,” 497.

" Walter C. Hamm, “A Study of Presidential Votes,” Political Science Quarterly 16 (1901): 50-67.
” Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 60.

2° Edward Porritt, “The Value of Political Editorials,” Atlantic Monthly 105 (January 1910): 62-67.

2' F. Stuart Chapin, “The variability of the popular vote at Presidential Elections,” American Journal
of Sociology 18 (1912): 222-240.

118

5:.
m

111 Cor

role a

Rm}
Work
the jt
and a
Educ;

Stead

2’ Willi

Merl}

2‘Stead
25 I
Stead

W.T. Stead, “Government by Journalism,”

 

in Contemporary Review in 1886

 

A few good men of the right sort, acting like ministers or monarchs in their
role as editors, could properly guide public opinion and restore democracy, and
journalism could make government work, according to W.T. Stead in Contemporary
Review in 1886.23 Stead believed the press, and only the press, could make democracy
work if it were in the hands of the right sort of men who saw it as their duty to perform
the job of educating public opinion. His argument compared the editor to a minister
and a monarch. The editor could, and should, through the newspaper generate,
educate, and guide public opinion, the greatest force in politics, according to Stead.“
Stead wrote,

In a democratic age, in the midst of a population which is able to read, no

position is comparable for permanent influence and far reaching power to that

of an editor who understands his vocation. In him are vested almost all the
attributes of real sovereignty. His has almost exclusive rights of initiative; he
retains a permanent right of direction; and above all he better than any man is
able to generate that steam, known as public opinion, which is the greatest

force in politics.‘5

 

2‘ William F. Ogburn and Delvin Peterson, “Political Thought of Social Classes,” Political Science
Quarterly 31 (1916): 300-317.

a"W.T. Stead, “Government by Journalism,” Contemporary Review 4 (May 1886): 653-674.

" Stead, “Government by Journalism,” 663, 664, 667.

2’ Stead, “Government by Journalism,” 661.

119

Journalism, in the form of a daily newspaper, could save democracy, and it
should, according to Stead’s prescriptive piece. It was a call to improve the press and
to position the press as the only method of saving democracy. Stead wrote, “Even as it
now is, with all its disabilities and all its limitations, the Press is almost the most

effective instrument for discharging many of the functions of government now left

us.9926

Stead’s Jeremiad placed the editor in the role of the minister who must explain
the higher road to his congregation of backsliding readers. There was a danger of
losing democracy and self-government, but the proper men becoming editors and
journalists, who behave in the proper way and educate the readers, could avert that
danger.

Great Britain in the distant past was more democratic than the United States in
the 18805 because people talked to each other in Great Britain in the distant past,
however, more recently-the British had been unable to talk to each other, thus
endangering democracy, Stead wrote. A technological solution was found; technology
conquered the distance that threatened democracy, according to Stead. He wrote, “The
telegraph and the printing-press have converted Great Britain into a vast agora, or
assembly of the whole community, in which the discussion of the affairs of State is

9927

carried on from day to day in the hearing of the whole people.

 

” Stead, “Government by Journalism,” 674.
‘7 Stead, “Government by Journalism,” 654.

120

Stead assumed. hearing about affairs of state was equivalent to participating in
a discussion of the affairs of state. Hearing substituted for speaking. Further, this is
an example of the necessity of remembering to forget.” The British past, of course,
was comprised of several hierarchically organized monarchies.

Stead portrayed existing government as a barrier between the people of the
nation and self-rule. Still, he was optimistic since progress was taking the government
closer to the people, according to Stead. He wrote, “Nations become more and more

929
’ For

impatient of the intermediaries between themselves and the exercise of power.
Stead, the nation equaled a people who were citizens who ruled themselves, and the
people as individual citizens made up the nation. The English were a people, a nation,
as were the Germans, according to Stead. While editors should educate, and the press
should form public opinion, at the same time Stead thought that the press was a gauge
of public opinion.”0

The need for the editors to act was based on Stead’s fear of a threat to the
social order if the public were left uneducated. In a sacred demos, the editor was to be
the minister.

Stead’s article revealed multiple conceptions of the world. The person was
simultaneously a citizen, a member of the flock to whom the minister and editor would

preach and educate, and a consumer who voted with a coin. Stead equated the act of

paying for a newspaper to voting for the paper. He wrote, “The editor’s mandate is

 

” Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso 1995): 187-206.
1’ Stead, “Government by Journalism,” 653.

121

renewed day by day, and his electors register their vote by a voluntary payment of the

9931

daily pence. Stead’s sinner consumer needed to be led by the newspaper into being
a rational participant in democracy because he was not capable on his own.
J .W. Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion,”
in American Journal of Sociology in 1895

J. W. J enks shared Stead’s view that a few men should lead and educate public
opinion, which was badly in need of guidance. Where Stead prescribed the editor and
independent journalists to guide public opinion, Jenks spread the role of guidance
wider. He wrote, “The duty, in consequence, lies not merely on our politicians, but it
lies on all intelligent, moral men who have the welfare of the country at heart, to rouse,

9932

guide, shape public opinion. Jenks argued that although public opinion should be
based on thoughtful judgment and reasoned consideration, it was not. Rather, public
opinion was based on sentiment, prejudice or political party influence, he wrote.
Therefore, J enks wrote, it was the duty of a few thoughtful men to openly discuss the
facts and use their influence to promote thinking and judgment by the peOple.33

Public opinion was not what it needed to be in order to guide government
because public opinion was not being properly guided, according to J enks. He thought

newspapers corrupted because they must cater to advertisers. J enks believed

legislators only followed what they thought voters wanted and did not lead public

 

’° Stead, “Government by Journalism,” 658.
" Stead, “Government by Journalism,” 655.
’2 Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion,” 164.
” Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion,” 169.

122

opinion as they should. Jenks’ concern with the necessity of the proper guidance of
public opinion grew from his understanding of the relationship between public opinion
and government. He wrote, “The fact that there is a widespread belief that the ruling
power in public affairs, as well as in social life, is public opinion, makes it desirable
that the nature of public opinion itself—how it is constituted, who forms it, the way in
which its influence is manifested, the ways in which it may be guided—be carefully
studied.”

Jenks knew individuals had opinions, however, he was concerned about the
way those opinions were formed. He believed that only a few people based their
opinions on reason. He wrote, “It is probably not too much to say that not 25 per cent.
of our adult [men] voting population have deliberately made up an opinion on a public
question after anything like a reasonably full and fair study of the facts in the case.”35
Jenks described all of the other ways individuals might come to have opinions that

were of less value than those opinions reached through reason. Individuals might be
under the sway of a few influential men, base their opinion on others who were are as
unreasoning as themselves, follow the opinions of newspapers, or follow prejudices.”
He thought newspapers suspect because they relied on advertising. He wrote, “Public
opinion, then, seems to be a mixture of sense and nonsense, of sentiment, of prejudice,

of more or less clearly defined feelings coming from influences of various kinds that

 

” Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion,” 158.
” Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion,” 160.
’° Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion,” 159-160.

123

have been brought to bear upon the citizens, these influences perhaps being mostly
those of sentiment rather than those acting upon the judgement?”7

Concerned that so few men were reasoning human beings, Jenks went on to
suggest the ways a few of the right sort of men could influence public opinion so
public opinion would have the correct effect on legislation. He encouraged influential
individuals to “chat up” a few men of influence in different business and social
classes. He encouraged the use of churches, public lectures, university extension
classes, and meetings of all kinds.” Jenks’ concern was for the quality of opinion and
the need to lead the mass of people so they could vote. He thought it would take some
time to prepare the majority and thus a few men should work to improve the general
state of public opinion. Still he showed faith in progress. He wrote, “While the
people cannot soon be ready to vote intelligently on complicated questions, they can
so vote on simple fundamental questions, if they will; and they can, far better than
they now do, put men in power who will faithfirlly work for the public good.”39

J enks’ article on the need for a few men concerned with the good of the
country to guide public opinion was in the first issue of the American Journal of
Sociology, published in 1895-1896, indicating an existing concern with the quality of
public opinion and the relationship of public opinion to the ability to cast an informed

vote. Jenks was concerned that the norm should be a reasoning citizen when as he

believed the norm was a citizen who was thinking from sentiment or prejudice. He

 

’7 Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion,” 160.
” Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion,” 165.

124

saw the masses of voters, men, as incompetent because they were not using reason to
form their opinions. With time, however, the unreasoning citizen might be guided to
competence, he wrote.

E. L. Godkin, “The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion”

in Atlantic Monthly in 1898

 

E. L. Godkin offered no solutions to the problems with public opinion he
described in Atlantic Monthly in 1898. Godkin described two kinds of public opinion.
The first was a belief in conformity to standards and was unchanging because Godkin
believed some views were inherited as the result of being English or American or
Roman, for example. According to Godkin, the second type of public opinion was a
political form, and the political form of public opinion should be expressed in
elections and in newspapers. Unfortunately, there were many ways in which ways
newspapers were inadequate for the job, Godkin wrote. His main concern, however,
was the lack of ability of most men to form opinions on subjects that needed
judgments and decisions. He concluded that the excess of influences on modern man,
along with a huge lessening of the influence of authority, had resulted in there being
no way to guide public opinion. Furthermore, how public opinion was formed had

become a mystery because there were so many influences on modern man, who,

Godkin thought, sought only comfort from legislation.”

 

’9 Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion,” 169.
‘° E. L. Godkin, “The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion,” The Atlantic Monthly, 131
(January 1898): 1-15.

125

 

 

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The problems Godkin saw with understanding public opinion as a political
force modified by events are the same ones that would be struggled with during the
twentieth century. He wrote, “The kind I am now talking of is the public opinion, or
consensus of opinion, among large bodies of persons, which acts as a political force,
imposing on those in authority certain enactments, or certain lines of policy?”l He
asked these questions: How does public opinion exercise control over affairs? Is there
a way to know public opinion other than an election and without listening to those in
power? He pointed out that definite issues are not submitted to the public in an
election. He also noted no one knows why people vote as they do. He said most
people follow their party, and votes are not definite expressions on a subject.

Godkin commented on the nature of newspapers; he turned to newspapers
because he believed elections could not explain public opinion. He dismissed
newspapers because he claimed they were less and less organs of public opinion
because of increased reliance on advertising, and he dismissed the members of the
general public because of their lessening capacity for continuous attention. After all,
he wrote, they read fast-paced novels. Godkin saw the nation reflected in the
newspapers none-the-less, but he took this stand because he said newspapers were the
only alternative. Newspapers were the only way for one nation to know another

nation. He wrote, “To the outsider the newspaper press is the nation talking about

itself. Nations are known to other nations mainly through their press.”42

 

" Godkin, “The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion,” 1.
’2 Godkin, “The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion,” 6.

126

Walter C. Ham “A Study of Presidential Votes,”

 

in Political Science Quarterly in 1901

 

Walter Hamm studied presidential elections and talked about how to encourage
voting. He conceived of voting as a duty of citizenship. He wrote, “There have been
encouraging indications in recent years that this interest was increasing and that a
better understanding of the duties of citizenship in a free government was being
gained?” After comparing the voter turnout to the total population, he discussed ways
to encourage voting and suggested ways to make voting easier.

Hamm was confident that the future would not bring another “dilution of the
electorate” caused by immigration and the enfranchisement of former slaves. He
concluded his analysis in a tone hopeful for the future. He wrote, “The strongest
force, however, towards, increasing the exercise of the suffrage is a public sentiment
fully informed, sanely healthful and constantly alert. The progress toward such a
condition of public sentiment, while not so rapid as could be desired, is marked

”’5 Hamm was encouraged that little harm had been

enough to encourage further effort.
done by allowing those he deemed a threat to vote. He continued, “In the past these
masses of new voters have constituted the chief sources of corruption and of danger to

the purity of the ballot. That no more harm resulted than we have actually experienced

from these causes is a reason for confidence in the generally healthy condition of the

 

" Walter c. Hamm, “A Study of Presidential Votes,” Political Science Quarterly 16 (1901) 50.
“ Hamm, “A Study of Presidential Votes,” 67.
” Hamm, “A Study of Presidential Votes,” 67.

127

body politic.”"5 Hamm was confident only those prepared to vote would be permitted
to vote in the future.

The immigration into the United States, and the perception of the immigrants’
national status as a racial marker that carried differing mental abilities and political
views, led Hamm to see the American electorate as diluted by the influx. His racial
assumptions allowed him to be hopeful because of the strength of the polity, and its
political system, to survive the dilution. He knew his reader would understand the
harm that had been experienced because he assumed his reader shared his View of the
dilution caused by immigration and the enfranchisement of former slaves.

These four men, Stead, Jenks, Godkin and Hamm, were all concerned with the
status of democracy. While they worried about democracy they were hopeful, except
for Godkin. Stead looked to newspaper editors, Jenks to moral men and Hamm to the
rightness of the system itself to fix democracy by seeing that public opinion was
properly led. The common man was in need of education by newspaper editors or
moral men. Hamm did not specify a solution but confidently predicted the continued
health of the body politic in spite of the lessening of the substance of the voters.
Taken as a whole, they believed people in general needed to be led, and should be led,
to participate rationally in the political process. Godkin lacked hope because he
believed that the newspapers were no longer up to doing the job of leading people.

Edward Porritt, “The Value of Political Editorials”

 

in Atlantic Monthly in 1910

 

” Hamm, “A Study of Presidential Votes,” 67.

128

Edward Porritt was concerned with the efficacy of political editorials in
newspapers in a 1910 Atlantic Monthly article. He assumed that an Anglo-Saxon
world was comprised of England, the United States and Canada. He found different
reasons for what he perceived to be the lack of effect of newspaper articles on voters in
different countries. Unfortunately, according to Porritt, as the number of people who
could vote increased, so too did the propaganda efforts by English politicians.
According to Porritt, political propagandists behaved like preachers, since the
politician stood on street comers, village greens, and in the market place to reach
voters. Porritt contended that this direct appeal to voters by politicians reduced the
influence of newspaper editorials. He was especially concerned with an increase in
propaganda during the early years of the twentieth century.’7

The decade turned, and so did the attitude about influence. Although the
concern with the need to lead the common man would continue and dominate, there
began to be worry by some writers of syllabus articles about the wrong sort of people
influencing the common man.

Walter J. Shepard, “Public Opinion”
in The American Journal of Sociology in 1910

In an article richly revealing of the breadth of thinking about public opinion in
1910, Walter J. Shepard argued for an individual conception of the concept of public
opinion—each individual having an opinion—and multiple publics, and he predicted

certain rule by public opinion in civilized Anglo-Saxon countries as legislative bodies

 

’7 Edward Porritt, “The Value of Political Editorials,” Atlantic Monthly 105 (1910): 62-67.

129

withered away.’8 He reviewed multiple meanings of public opinion that included the
following: Public opinion equals opinions on which all persons in a country are
agreed;"9 public opinion is the will of God;’0 public opinion is the sum total of opinions
on any subject; public opinion is the opinion of the educated classes;’I public opinion
is social conscience;’2 and public opinion is not the result of elections or what was
written in the newspapers and is often confirsed with one of its organs, the press or the
electorate.”
In 1910, the concept of public opinion was in wide circulation. Shepard wrote,
There are few terms used more frequently or with more assurance than Public
Opinion. It is constantly upon our tongues to explain the most ordinary social
and political occurrences. Every newspaper employs it on an average several
times in each issue; every politician and statesman refers to it in nearly every
speech. Were it to be lost from our daily vocabulary it would be quite
impossible to make ourselves understood in any discussion or conversation
about political matters.”
The idea that public opinion governed in what Shepard called civilized countries also

was widespread, he wrote.” Shepard wanted to explain how public opinion actually

 

” Walter J. Shepard, “Public Opinion,” The American Journal of Sociology, 15 (1909-1910):32-60.
The reference to legislative bodies withering away is not explained in the text.

” Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 41.
’° Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 43.
5' Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 42.
‘2 Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 43.
” Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 44.
” Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 32.
” Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 32.

130

worked, and he wrote, “But how this intangible, inexplicable force operates on the
machinery of governments; how it makes itself felt by rulers, and what are the
sanctions which compel obedience to its mandates are problems little understood and
subjects of much disagreement?“

Shepard argued for social action based on individual action, and he argued
against what he called an organic conception of society and used Italian nationalism as
his example. He wrote, “We speak of Italy awakening to ‘national consciousness.’
This is certainly a very convenient and expressive phrase, but it conveys the idea that
the nation, Italy itself, awoke out of something comparable to a long trance?”

In fact, a long trance was just what the nationalist would assume. The
awakening would have been by the mass of individuals to a realization of an eternal
bond, and the bond would have been conceived in various ways. Nationalists had
imagined an eternal bond, before a nation existed.’8 It was in some ways a part of the
response to the Enlightenment’s cosmopolitan egalitarianism, as was explained in
chapter three.

Shepard made a modest correction to the idea of awakening. He retained the
idea of a new awareness of an existing relationship, but he shified the identity of the

awakeners. He accepted the awakening and changed the awakener from a reference to

the whole to the individuals comprising the whole. Shepard wrote,

 

5° Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 32.

’7 Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 33.

5' Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism. (New York: Verso, 1995): 187-206.

131

Unless we happen to be adherents of the organic theory of the state we would
prefer to explain the phenomena otherwise—the citizens of Italy became
conscious of a bond of union between them all in the fact that they belonged to
the same nation. The individualist would certainly maintain that it was an
awakening of the citizens to this realization, and nothing more, that constituted
“national consciousness;” that there is certainly no consciousness in the nation
apart from the individuals.”

Shepard was careful to place boundaries around his terms. Nation, crowd, and
society were, for Shepard, groups of individuals. He wrote, “They are not separate
entities or organisms incapable of analysis into the individuals of which they are
composed. Social phenomenon are nothing but individual action performed under
special conditions which give it a special character.”60 He defined public opinion and
wrote, “So a public opinion must be an opinion to which the members of a public
agree, not in a merely accidental fashion, but in full cognizance that this opinion
constitutes a bond of union between the individuals holding it.”6| He defined a public,
“Any unorganized association of individuals bound together by common opinions,
sentiments, or desires and too numerous for each to maintain personal relations with

the others constitutes a public in the broadest sense of the term.”62

 

” Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 33.
‘° Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 34.
” Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 35.
°’ Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 36.

132

Shepard set opinion in opposition to sentiment. Sentiment was emotional and
therefore could not be an opinion.63 Although sentiments were the product of
prejudice, heredity, or tradition, he thought public opinion was shared reason.”
Shepard insisted that there are many publics, individuals bound by common sentiment
but not maintaining relations with each other, that gather around public opinion on
issues. Shepard thought that each of those the publics has an opposition public on the
same issue. Therefore, there is no one public opinion on an issue, according to
Shepard, however, there was a ruling opinion. By ruling opinion, he meant dominant
opinion.

Following his careful effort to define public opinion on political questions as
expressed in journalism and elections, Shepard was ready to say that legislative bodies
were on the verge of being obsolete in the Anglo-Saxon countries, defined as the
United States and England.‘55 He wrote, “Keen political observers declare that no
tendency is so universal or significant in all countries today as that which marks the
decline of legislative bodies. These have proved unamenable to public opinion and
other more serviceable organs are being created—especially the popular initiative and
referendum.”56
F. Stuart Chapig “The variability of the popular vote at presidential elections”

in American Journal of Sociology in 1912

 

‘3 Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 39.

“ Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 40.

‘5 Porritt had included Canada in his list of Anglo-Saxon countries. Porritt, “The Value of Political
Editorials.”

“ Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 59.

133

That all citizens were not casting votes based on reason was F. Stuart Chapin’s
assumption in 1912 writing in the American Journal of Sociology. He followed
Franklin H. Giddings in viewing a political majority as being comprised of a few on
the margins who are intelligent and capable of voting independently through several
gradations to the stupid at the center of the mass of voters.67 There could be no doubt
about the continuing suspicion of the quality of the mass of voters, according to
Chapin. The intelligent were few, marginal and capable of independent reasoning.
His analysis of voting patterns, however, gave him hope because there appeared to be
an increase in the number of intelligent, independent voters. He wrote, “Intelligent
political action seems to be on the increase in approximately the ratio Shown by the
increasing variabilities of the popular vote at presidential elections?“ Increased
variability in voting meant, to Chapin, increased rationality. He used statistical
analysis of votes for the president, compiled for the first time, and found that the
voters were growing more rational.
Sydney G. Fisher, “The Legendary and Myth Making Process in Histories of the
American Revolution”
in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphicy'or
Promoting Usefitl Knowledge in 1912

In 1912, in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at

Philadelphia for Promoting Usefiil Knowledge, Sydney Fisher issued a call for the

 

‘7 F. Stuart Chapin, “The variability of the popular vote at Presidential elections,” American Journal
of Sociology, 18 (1912): 222-240.

134

facts of the American Revolution to be more widely known. Fisher explained how the
usual events of the time had been misrepresented. The article offered an excellent
example of the way in which nation was conceived.

According to Fisher, the facts of the American Revolution, and the dissention
in the country at the time, were left out of the history of the period. He wrote that this
was because the earliest, authoritative source was a Whig view and because Americans
found it necessary to cover up dissent in order to build the nation. Fisher claimed that
the author burned the actual earliest and most authoritative source, and that the
existing earliest and most authoritative source was the Annual Register. As Fisher
explained, the Register was written by Edmund Burke and therefore carried the
minority Whig point of view. Fisher believed this Whig view argued for the unity of
the colonies with Britain and a conciliatory policy by the British in order to placate the
colonists. The fault of the Revolutionary War was placed with a few misguided men,
whereas most of the people living in the colonies did not want to start a separate
country, according to Fisher. Most of the subsequent histories relied on the Register,
he wrote. Fisher explained that Reverend Mason L. Weems wrote the first popular
version of the Revolution, and Weems wrote immensely p0pular biographies of

Washington, Franklin, and Marion. Fisher detailed the multiple problems with all of

 

°' F. Stuart Chapin, “The variability of the popular vote at presidential elections,” American Journal
of Sociology, 18 (I912): 240.

135

the histories and argued from the position that new facts mean new history Should be
written and disseminated.”

Fisher wanted it widely known that there was internal dissention at the time of
the American Revolution. For example, he wrote, the loyalists were hunted down and
driven out of the new country, then treated badly in England.70 According to Fisher,
America was a disunited country after the war and its constitution was regarded as an
experiment, one that might not succeed:n He wrote, “Our democratic ideas and
manners were despised and our newness and crudeness contrasted with the settled
comfort and refinement of the old nations. We all felt this keenly. Our writers and
able men struggled might and main to unite our people and build up a nation.”72

This is a striking example of the influence of romantic nationalism and the
narrative created in its wake. It could also be seen as an instance of present-
mindedness in Fisher’s historical account. Fisher’s assumptions about nation were
clearly revealed. Fisher explained that immediately following the War for
Independence the United States was contrasted with older nations. He wrote, “Our
democratic ideas and manners were despised and our newness and crudeness

contrasted with the settled comfort and refinement of the old nations?” He did not see

the United States or France as the first nation following the revolutions against

 

” Sydney G. Fisher, “The Legendary and Myth-Making Process in Histories of the American
Revolution, ” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting
Usefid Knowledge, 51 (April-June 1912): 53-75.

7° Fisher, “Legendary and Myth-Making Process,” 54-55.

7' Fisher, “Legendary and Myth-Making Process,” 55.

7’ Fisher, “Legendary and Myth-Making Process,” 55.

7’ Fisher, “Legendary and Myth-Making Process,” 55.

136

monarchy and absolutism as described in chapter three. He accepted the nationalist
claim of an eternal nation and saw the United States as new while at the same time
other nations were old, refined and settled. The United States was new in the world in
the sense of an experiment and a new form of government, and he compared it to the
old nations. There is no alternative, other than romantic nationalism, for seeing other
nations—which were in fact behaving quite like empire and monarchy—as old and
refined.” The older nations to which Fisher compared the United States in its
newness, could only be nation in a sense of Shared culture or shared blood-linked
character, because the forms of bureaucratic organization prior to the revolutions were
monarchy and empire. Fisher apparently thought of nation as some kind of eternal
bond. Fisher’s next sentence revealed a contrasting view of nation as he described the
reaction to the comparison being made. “We all felt this keenly. Our writers and able
men struggled might and main to unite our people and build up a nation.”75 The
covering up of dissent at the origins of the nation allowed for the building up of the
nation, which in part was accomplished by telling a story lacking dissention. Fisher
wrote, “So they described a Revolution that never happened and never could happen.
A whoop and hurrah boys! All Spontaneous, all united; mercifirl noble, perfect; all

virtue and grand ideas on one Side, all vice, wickedness, effeteness and degeneration

 

7’ Anderson, Imagined Communities , 5, 47-65.
7’ Fisher, “Legendary and Myth-Making Process,” 55.

137

on the other?“5 Fisher revealed the way in which the beginnings must be forgotten in
order to remember to build unity.77

George Kibbe Turner, “Manufacturing Public Opinion”

 

in McClure ’s Magazine in 1912

 

George Kibbe Turner, writing in McClure ’s, railed against the practice of
“Manufacturing Public Opinion: The New Art of Making Presidents by Press Bureau”
and concluded laws would soon be passed to limit the amount of money spent on
political campaigns.” Turner detailed the individual contributors to several campaigns
and the then huge amount of money spent to influence press coverage. His
assumptions were as follows: Press bureaus created news and supplied it to
newspapers; this costs a great deal of money; because so much money was spent, the
system was corrupted; the newspaper created public opinion.

- Turner assumed that the public could be manipulated. He was concerned not
with how the public might be manipulated but rather that too much manipulation was
in the hands of the few with money. His common man was not wise.

Philip Marshall Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy”
in North American Review 1916
Writing in North American Review in 1916, Philip Marshall Brown argued

against any kind of widespread participation in foreign affairs, such as a referendum or

 

7’ Fisher, “Legendary and Myth-Making Process,” 56.
7’ Anderson, Imagined Communities, 187-206.

7' George Kibbe Turner, “Manufacturing Public Opinion: The New Art of Making Presidents by
Press Bureau,” McClure '3 Magazine, 39 (1912): 316-327.

138

initiative, except to vote the policy makers in or out of oflice.79 In his refutation of the
argument for the democratization of diplomacy conducted in the marketplace, Brown
claimed people in general were not competent. He wanted men for diplomats who
were representative of American ideals.”o Brown supported the diplomat who was not
a policy maker but rather an agent who responded to the statesman at the head of the
nation. Moreover, Brown believed the particular type of man suited to being a
diplomat was the same in each nation. He wrote, “It requires the same knowledge of
men, the same keenness of insight, the same power of discussion, of persuasion; in
sum, the same tact, or what we are accustomed to denote generally as common-
sense?”1

What set diplomats apart fiom one nation to another was the degree to which
they were most representative of their nation, according to Brown. For Brown,
American diplomats needed to be real Americans. He wrote, “The qualities which
made them successful as men of affairs at home were the very qualities essential for
the duties of American diplomats. To these qualities of mind, heart and personality,
must be added the distinction of being, on the whole, truly representative

Americans?”2

The truly representative American diplomat who had been chosen to
protect national interests also was expected to judge the interests of international

society, according to Brown. He wrote, “And the ready, courageous recognition of

 

7’ Philip Marshall Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” North American Review 204 (1916): 691-
704.

'° Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 700-701.
" Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 693.
'2 Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 693.

139

national duty must necessarily lie in the hands of those charged with supreme
responsibility, who are best able to judge the exact situation, of the measures required
for the protection of national interests, and the interests of international society in
general.”"’

Brown worried that even the best and most representative American diplomat
was in danger of becoming devitalized through becoming more cosmopolitan because
when that happened, the diplomat ceased being able to represent America. He wrote,

Another great objection to a permanent, classified diplomatic service is the

danger to which diplomats are exposed—and for some inexplicable reason,

American diplomats in particular—of becoming denationalized to a certain

extent, of becoming cosmopolitan to such a devitalizing degree that they cease

.to be thoroughly representative of their country in its varied interests, its

national characteristics, its feelings, sympathies, and even its ideals. The prime

requisite in a diplomat is that he should be absolutely representative, the
faithful interpreter of his fellow-countrymen, of their ideas, ideals, and highest
interests.“

Brown’s argument revealed much of what was then the current upper class
common sense. Specifically, his argument was with Norman Angell, G. Lowes

Dickinson, and Walter Lippmann, who stated his case in the book, The Stakes of

 

” Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 699.
" Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 700-701.

140

Diplomacy, set in the context of determining the causes of World War One.” In
making the argument, Brown assumed that the nation was on a path of progress
toward improvement.” Brown masculinized the nation. The test to the nation was
cast as a test of manhood. Brown pointed out how many what he called “mysterious
challenges”87 could arise to form the destiny of a nation, including, “the sudden storms
that arise, the dangers, the tests of manhood, the appeals to honor, the sense of duty.”88
Additionally, he called the loss of representativeness of American ideals a
devitalization resulting from becoming too cosmopolitan.

When Brown equated becoming cosmopolitan with being devitalized and less
representative of the real Americans he showed the way in which romanticism and
reaction to Enlightenment reason underlie his thinking. If the nation were to be
distinct, its uniquenes was to be found in its character, sentiment, and traditions,
according to Brown. This was contrary to Hobsbawm’s notion of the nation as freely
chosen by its members.89 Brown assumed that his assertions about the devitalizing
effects of cosmopolitanism were commonsense. The fact of American susceptibility
to becoming cosmopolitan and the resultant devitalization and thus lack of ability to
uphold American ideals and interests could be used as an argument in opposition to a

permanent diplomatic corps without explanation. Brown’s readers’ would have

understood his argument.

 

" Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 691.
” Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 704.
'1 Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 699.
" Brown, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 699.

141

William F. Ogburn and Delvin Peterson, “Political Thoght of Social Classes”

in Political Science QuarterlLin 1916

 

William F. Ogburn and Delvin Peterson used votes on 103 referenda to
measure class differences in Oregon. They concluded that there was probably more
worry about class war than there needed to be because the capitalist, middle, and labor
classes were not that far apart on issues. Ogburn and Peterson relied on Herbert
Spencer and Franklin Giddings for theoretical justification.”

Ogburn and Peterson take Giddings “consciousness-of-kind” to mean
agreement on the referenda issues they measure. Additionally, many aspects of
heterogeneity were discussed as leading to difficulty governing and the vote by classes
was measured. They saw groups of people in New York City and Austria-Hungary as
being different races. They wrote, “One reason why good government is difficult in
New York City is the great heterogeneity of its population. In Austria-Hungary, also,
a great hindrance to the success of government is the great number of widely differing

”9' This reference to different races was based on what we would now

racial groups.
call nationalities. Ogburn and Peterson linked language and nationality to arrive at

different races. They measured classes because of the threat of a social revolution and

cited what they called industrial disturbances—these were strikes—in five states to

 

'9 Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality, 2nd. Ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 18-20.

9° William F. Ogburn and Delvin Peterson, “Political Thought of Social Classes,” Political Science
Quarterly 31 (1916): 300-317.

” Ogburn and Peterson, “Political Thought of Social Classes,” 301.

142

give credibility to the concern. They wrote, “To some these differences appear so
great that a social revolution and a class war are quite freely predicted.”92

Arthur Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy”

 

in Atlantic Monthly in 1917

 

Arthur Bullard argued for the democratization of foreign affairs in the widely
circulating Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1917. He argued that America should make
diplomacy democratic as a contribution to world peace.” The article provided
definitions of and revealed assumptions about key terms in this analysis. He referred
to the nation as “we, the nation” and meant all of the people.” Publicity was used to
mean out in the open, out in public and was set in opposition to acts performed in
secret, according to Bullard.9s He believed that publicity was good and served the
cause of increasing democracy. Additionally, publicity was part of the progress of
revealing secrets and thereby making improvements, and democracy made progress by
fighting secrecy with publicity.

Common people were the same in all countries and were all striving for a
better democracy, Bullard wrote.” He believed that the will of the nation, of all of the
people, concerning issues of foreign affairs was difficult for any president to determine

because there was no machinery available with which to take a referendum on

 

” Ogburn and Peterson, “Political Thought of Social Classes,” 301.

” Arthur Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” Atlantic Monthly, 119 (April 1917): 491-499.
” Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 491.

9’ Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 492.

9’ Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 492.

143

diplomatic issues.97 According to Bullard, there was no public opinion on the United
States relations with South American countries because the masses of people did not
know the facts. He wrote, “But there is nothing which deserves to be called public

9998

opinion on the subject. The democracy has not been trusted with the essential facts.
Bullard assumed that if the mass of people had access to facts they could reason and
decide an opinion.99 Censorship of the press and mail was equated with control of
public opinion, and in Britain, public opinion had been successfully controlled.'°°
Bullard thought Germans were the “enemies of civilization.”'°' He believed
bloodlines carried political sympathies. He wrote, “Any American who does not fit
into this pattern [of longing to fight on the side of the British] is suspected of German

9102

blood or a sinfirl desire to run contraband.’ Civilized people were British, French,

and American. He wrote, “The result of following the traditional protocol of
diplomacy is that, while the people of the United States and Britain and France have

every reason to cooperate in the general work of civilization, their governments are

”103

snarling at each other. The British he considered cousins to Americans. He wrote,

“The great mass of our people want cordial relations with our Anglo-Saxon

”104

cousins. Bullard advocated going directly to the people of another nation. He

 

’7 Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 493.
” Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 493.
” Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 493.
'°° Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 495.
'°' Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 495.
m Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 495.
“’3 Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 496.
'°’ Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 497.

144

wrote, “If we find the Foreign Office of any country standing in the way of cordial
friendship, we must go over their heads, directly to the people. It is the popular
friendship more than the good-will of the rulers of the moment which we seek.”“”

He sought to enlighten public opinion in the United States and to discover
direct ways to communicate between the mass of people in one nation and those in
another nation. Bullard thought making diplomacy more democratic would make a
great contribution to the future peace of the world and, therefore, would be of great
benefit to the race. His referent was the Anglo-Saxon race.“ He wrote, “The solution
of the problem would be the greatest contribution which any nation could make

”107

toward the welfare of the race. Bullard’s views reflect the assumptions of the
progress of civilization led by the progress of the Anglo-Saxon race. Some races were
more civilized than others. This thinking was overlaid by a belief in democracy
furthered by openness about facts. The people were somehow better than their leaders.
Public opinion was formed by the press and inherited ideas passed along in blood.
Bullard was the only advocate of the wisdom of the common people, however, his
racialist assumptions about civilization would have led to a rank order of nations by
ability. One possible way to bring these ideas together would be to read him as
advocating the wisdom of a people within a nation.

Charles E. Merriam, “American Publicity in Italy”

in The American Political Science Review in 1919

 

"” Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 499.
'°‘ Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 499.

145

The renowned Charles E. Merriam of the University of Chicago recounted his
work as the head of the Committee on Public Information (CPI) in Italy in The
American Political Science Review in November 1919]” According to Merriam, it
was only a few months afier the beginning of the efforts by the Creel Commission in
the United States that branch offices were set up in thirty-two foreign countries. The
purpose, he wrote, was to explain the war aims of the United States.” Merriam
explained that the CPI branches were charged with countering anti-war propaganda
with truth by using newspapers, journalists, speakers, movies, and postcards. After

acknowledging the initial superiority of the Central Powers use of propaganda,

' '0 Merriam

Merriam claimed the Allies had caught up and surpassed their ability.
called propaganda a weapon and defined it as, “the psychological working on the war

99111

will of the enemy. Publicity was the Spreading of truthful facts to counter the lies

112

of propaganda. The CPI efforts were justified because untruthS were being spread,
according to Merriam. He wrote, “It was to meet these arguments [that America was

unwilling to enter the war, had no army and couldn’t raise one, even if any army was

raised, it could not be transported due to Shortages, and even if transported it couldn’t

 

”7 Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” 499.

'0’ Charles E. Merriam, “American Publicity in Italy, " The American Political Science Review, 13
(November 1919): 541-555.

'°’ Merriam, “American Publicity,” 541. The reporter Will Irwin and later Edward Lisson were in
charge of the CPI’s foreign offices.

"° Merriam, “American Publicity,” 541.

"' Merriam, “American Publicity,” 541.

"2 Merriam, “American Publicity,” 554.

146

fight because of inexperienced soldiers] that the office of the Committee on Public
Information was established?”

Merriam recognized the credibility of Italian war veterans and the legitimacy
their sacrifice for the nation gave to their point of view. The CPI in Italy organized
celebrations—for May 24th to commemorate Italy’s entrance into the war and for the
Fourth of July—and crowds of tens of thousands gathered in major Italian cities.
Injured Italian veterans gave speeches that were greeted enthusiastically, according to
Merriam. He wrote, “They [the Mutilati] were one of the most effective pro-war
organizations in the country, for they spoke on behalf of thousands who had Shed their
blood for the Italian cause, and who could speak from the basis of a definite

”114

sacrifice. Merriam noted the evidence that the message of the CPI in Italy was

getting across.
One of the practical and amusing tests of our work occurred in Florence.
Professor Altrocchi was listening one day to a street speaker who offered to
talk on any subject, and at the close of his little Speech would take up a
collection. Professor Altrocchi asked him to speak on the United States and
the war, whereupon he proceeded with an eloquent discourse using the
standard facts and figures of the Committee on Public Infonnation.“

In a passage that reflected Merriam’s idealism, he claimed Italy was won, not only by

facts, but also with American idealism. He wrote,

 

113

Merriam, “American Publicity,” 544.

"’ Merriam, “American Publicity,” $52.

147

They were doubly impressed by the fact that America, so far distant from the
seat of war, so prosperous as a neutral, with nothing to gain in the way of
territory, was willing to undertake, across three thousand miles of sea, an
assault upon militarism and autocracy in an attempt to make the world safe for
democracy and to organize the world in a League of Nations for a permanent
peace. To them this appealed more strongly than the dollars or the supplies or

the soldiers of America, and its effect upon the morale of the struggling and

somewhat discouraged people cannot be denied.”6

He closed with an appeal for the scientific study of international
misunderstandings in order to keep the world peaceful and prosperous. Merriam was
certain of the truth of his message. His own idealism and belief in truth shined
through in the article. He was brimming with hope for science and truth. He was .
proud of the effort in Italy because it was based on what he believed to be the truth.
While he carefully detailed the views of those who opposed participation in the war,
he appeared to believe they could be convinced with truth.

Merriam assumed nation was natural, however, in one instance he pulled an
individual from a series in order to categorize him by race. Merriam was describing
the Italian coalition government and the individual members of the coalition. Merriam

described only one of the four by race. He wrote, “The minister of foreign affairs was

 

I13

Merriam, “American Publicity,” 549.

"’ Merriam, “American Publicity,” 555.

148

Baron Sonnino, an active factor in the building of modern Italy—English, Jewish and
Italian in race, conservative in tendency and skilled in diplomacy.”"7

The content of the articles published between 1886 and 1919 that comprised a
portion of Harwood Childs’ Princeton Public Opinion class syllabus reveal the
authors’ assumptions about the common man, public opinion and nation-race. The
major focus of the authors was with control of the common man. The common man
was seen as unreasoning and in need of guidance by those who knew best. Race was
seen as nation by the authors. Nationality meant a blood link among members. They
worried about the failure of democracy, and they saw the guidance of the common
man as necessary to make democracy a success.

In the next chapter, the articles from Childs’ syllabus that were published

following World War I are described and analyzed.

 

"1 Merriam, “American Publicity,” 545.

149

Chapter Five

Harwood Childs’ Public Opinion Syllabus Articles from 1920 to 1933

The call for a few good'men to lead, the assumption of the need to control the
masses and the intertwining of nation and race continued to dominate the thinking of
the people who wrote the articles in Childs’ syllabus published between 1920 and
1933. In the articles, the meaning of public opinion was contested, and sometimes
opinion was possessed by an individual. The common man was portrayed as
unreasoning or dangerous. The common man was not portrayed as wise. Although
the idea that race determines inherited characteristics dominated the articles, a few
authors contested the idea.

Many scholars believed that a few good men were needed to lead the
unreasoning masses of unwise common men. William Hocking thought that the best
leaders were bred. Additionally, he believed the mass of men needed to do a better job
choosing their leaders, as he told his readers in a Yale Review article in 1924.l
William Orton was certain that mass opinion was dangerous.2 He wrote, “There are, in
fact, few if any matters on which mass opinion can act rather than dangerously.”3

Writing in The American Journal of Sociology in 1927, Orton was repeating the call

for a few to lead that was present in the earliest articles from Childs’ syllabus.

 

' William Ernest Hocking, “Leaders and Led,” The Yale Review, 13 (July 1924): 625-641.
2 William Orton, “News and Opinion,” The American Journal of Sociology 38 (1927): 80-93.
3 Orton, “News and Opinion,” 93.

150

In 1929, Edward Corwin wanted to see academics as leaders of public opinion.
He indicated that the educated few could use science to advocate for a common good.4
The call for a few good men to lead reflected a belief that the great mass of citizens
lacked the ability to live up to the democratic ideal of an informed and reasoning
citizenry. Norman Meier was pessimistic about the common man’s reasoning ability,
and he thought that the common will was better understood as mass suggestion. Even
if the individual believed that he was reasoning, he was not, according to Meier.S

William Munro argued for more science in political science and argued

against what he called the democratic dogma of citizen participation.6 He wrote, “The
closer we get to a government by the multitude the nearer we get to chaos.”7 He
continued, “The principle of political equality, when pressed to its logical conclusion,

”8 Munro did not see a wise common man in 1927.

carries us straight to anarchy.
Nation and race were most often used interchangeably and occasionally as
separate categories in the articles in Childs’ syllabus published between 1920 and
1933. During that period the overlapping meaning of the concepts was only slightly
contested and did not disappear. The late nineteenth century meaning had taken race
and nation as interchangeable. The emerging conception of race in the early twentieth

century was based on skin color and geographic region, however, the ideas of nation

as race and a hierarchy of races dominated the articles from the public opinion canon.

 

‘ Edward S. Corwin, “The Democratic Dogma and the Future of Political Science,” The American
Political Science Review 23 (1929): 569-592.

5 Norman C. Meier, “Motives in Voting: A Study in Public Opinion,” The American Journal of
Sociology 31 (September 1925): 199-212.

6 William Bennett Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” Yale Review 16 (1927): 723-738.

7 Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 730-31.

151

In a 1920 Atlantic Monthly article, Paul Rohrbach described a Shared national
character carrying inherited traits.9 Races evolved, according to Joseph Geiger.lo In
explaining the way in which nation should not be race-based, A. Gordon Dewey
revealed that it was commonplace to think of nation as race-based in 1924.” Articles
written by Emory Bogardus in the Journal of Applied Sociology vividly display the
intertwining of the conceptions of race, language, and nation, together with college
students’ attitudes toward specific races.12 It is apparent from Floyd Allport’s work in
1925 that race and nation were on the social issues agenda.l3 In “An Experimental
Study of Nationality Preferences,” L. L. Thurstone used nationality and race
interchangeably,”and in 1927, William Munro assumed racial determinism was
natural." He wrote, “The determinism of racial heritage, at any rate, is a factor which
all intelligent students of comparative politics are accustomed to take into their
reckonings.”“5

Opinion was most frequently considered to be something that an individual

possesses, and something that needs direction or control. The nature of public opinion

 

' Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 731.

9 Paul Rohrbach, “German Reflections,” Atlantic Monthly, 125 (1920): 688-699.

'° Joseph Roy Geiger, “The Effects of the Motion Picture on the Mind and Morals of the Young,”
International Journal of Ethics, 34 (October 1923): 69-83.

" A. Gordon Dewey, “On Methods in the Study of Politics 1,” Political Science Quarterly, 38
(1923): 636-651; “On Methods in the Study of Politics II” Political Science Quarterly, 39 (I924): 218-
233.

'2 Emory S. Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins, " Journal of Applied Sociology, 9 (January
-February 1924/1925): 216-226; “Measuring Social Distance, “Journal of Applied Sociology 9 (March-
April 1924/1925): 299-308.

'3 Floyd I-l. Allport and D. A. Hartman, “The measurement and motivation of atypical opinion in a
certain group” The American Political Science Review 19 (1925): 735-760.

" L.L. Thurstone, “An Experimental Study of Nationality Preferences, " Journal of General
Psychology 1 (1928): 405-423.

'5 William Bennett Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” Yale Review 16 (1927): 723-738.

152

was widely discussed and rarely agreed on. In a Political Science Quarterly article, A.
Gordon Dewey argued for the intertwined formation and expression of public opinion
and pointed out the error of separating the two. Further, Dewey saw the need to
understand public opinion as something made, and not something discovered.l7
According to Emory Bogardus, public opinion was the opinion of individuals—an
aggregate sum—and he believed that if individuals’ opinions could be changed, then
public opinion changed, but slowly.'8

Although opinion was seen as something that individuals had, political
scientists were unable to define public opinion and decided to forgo the effort and
focused instead on measuring individual opinions, according to Arthur Holcombe’s
report on the discussion of the roundtable on political statistics presented in The
American Political Science Review in 1925. The group recommended avoiding use of
the term public opinion because it was difficult to define.'9 Nevertheless, the group
found a way to characterize opinion. Holcombe wrote, “(1) opinion need not be the
result of a rational process; (2) it need not include an awareness of choice; and (3) it
must be sufficiently clear or definite to create a disposition to act upon it under

favorable circumstances.”20 Note, an opinion lacking rationality and without

 

'6 Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 728.

'7 A. Gordon Dewey, “On Methods in the Study of Politics 1,” Political Science Quarterly, 38
(1923): 636-651; “On Methods in the Study of Politics 11” Political Science Quarterly, 39 (1924): 218-
233.

" Emory S. Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins, ” Journal of Applied Sociology, 9 (January
—February 1924/1925): 216-226; “Measuring Social Distance, “Journal of Applied Sociology 9 (March-
April 1924/1925): 299-308.

‘9 Arthur N. Holcombe, “Round Table on Political Statistics: The Measurement of Public Opinion,”
The American Political Science Review 19 (1925): 123-126.

2° Holcombe, “Round Table,” 123.

153

awareness of choice separates opinion from Enlightenment reason and the idea of self-
govemance as well as press responsibility.

The idea that the newspaper forms public opinion that results in a specific vote
was tested by George Lundberg, who took the idea to test this traditional assumption
from Robert Park. Lundberg equated vote results with public opinion," whereas for
William Munro, the idea that public opinion somehow governs was merely dogma in
need of destruction.22 Munro wrote that political science needed more science to
debunk what then was the current commonsense understanding of public opinion as
self rule, because that did not square with the facts—there is a tendency toward
government by the few.23 Robert Binkley described multiple meanings of public
opinion in 1928,“ and so did other scholars.25 Clearly, there were few Shared
definitions of public opinion in 1930 as George Lundberg described the contested
concept in The American Journal of Sociology.“5 Social scientists should get to work
on improving the practice of predicting elections, according to Charles Merriam.27 In
other words, he wanted to see the social sciences’ measuring methods advance

journalism’s gathering of straw votes. In an American Political Science Review article

 

2' George A. Lundberg, “The Newspaper and Public Opinion,” Social Forces 4 (1926): 709-715.

’1 William B. Munro, “The Worst Fundamentalism,” Atlantic Monthly 138 (1926): 451-459.

’3 William Bennett Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” Yale Review 16 (1927): 723-738.

2‘ Robert C. Binkley, “The Concept of Public Opinion in the Social Sciences,” Social Forces 6
(1928): 389-396.

2’ D. D. Droba, “Methods Used for Measuring Public Opinion,” The American Journal of Sociology
37 (1931): 410-423; Lowell Juilliard Carr, “Public Opinion as a Dynamic Concept,” Sociology and
Social Research 13 (1928): 18-29.

2‘ George A. Lundberg, “Public Opinion from a Behavioristic Viewpoint,” The American Journal of
Sociology 36 (1930): 387 - 405.

’7 Charles E. Merriam, “Research Problems in the Field of Parties, Elections, and Leadership,” The
American Political Science Review 24 (1930): 36-38.

154

in 1931, Harold Lasswell suggested that the definition of concepts Should come before
the measurement of concepts.”

The Articles
Paul RohrbachfiGerman Reflections”

in Atlantic Monthly in 1920

 

In an article in an elite magazine explaining conditions in Germany to readers
in the United States, Paul Rohrbach wrote about nation as having a consciousness and
a will, and opinion as being something shared among members of the nation because
of shared national character. Rohrbach’s article in Atlantic Monthly described the
changing allegiances of German political factions during and afier the war. He argued
for the necessity of lifiing the harsh economic measures imposed by the Versailles
Treaty if democracy were to survive in post-war Germany.”

Rohrbach discussed the unity of German public opinion and the ways in which
the unity was fractured as he described the existing threat to democracy from radicals
of both the right and left. He claimed that the only way opinion could have supported
the war was if the war were defensive, because the German national character would
not have tolerated war under any other circumstance. He wrote, “The only effective
and salutary measure for warding off the impending catastrophe would have been to
remember the old truth that Germany could not fight a war which was not supported

by the united public opinion of the nation, and that no war could have this support, in

 

2' Harold D. Lasswell, “ The Measurement of Public Opinion,” The American Political Science
Review 25 (1931): 311-326.
2’ Paul Rohrbach, “German Reflections,” Atlantic Monthly, 125 (1920): 688-699.

155

view of the national character and the influence of universal service, unless it were a
war of defense.’”°
In addition to his reliance on German national character to make his argument,
Rohrbach assumed that national traits were inherited. He was worried about the
weakening of the entire nation as a result of the blockade. He thought the
undemourishment of the parents would result in weakness that would be transmitted to

their descendants.”

Joseph Roy Geiger, “The Effects of the Motion Picture on the Mind and Morals of the

 

Young” in International Journal of Ethics in 1923

Joseph Geiger called attention to the multiple dangers that movies might
present to young people, and then concluded that movie producers appeared to be
trying to develop more of a group consciousness among themselves, to control their
product, much as the press had already done."2 His article details the dangers of the
abnormal and unnatural aspects of movies. Geiger believed that visual impressions
were more vivid and lasting than those gained fi'om reading or listening and that
people were under the spell of the movies. In the process of describing the problems
stemming fiom watching movies, Geiger revealed multiple assumptions. He
conceived of race as an aspect of evolution.

Geiger found movies unhealthy in many ways. Watching movies might

awaken instincts prematurely, over stimulate the imagination, incline a child toward

 

3° Rohrbach, “German Reflections,” 690.
3' Rohrbach, “German Reflections,” 691.

156

antisocial behavior, and produce eyestrain and nervous excitement. Further, the air in
the dark theater was stale and, therefore, unhealthy. The content in movies supplied
the “germs of nervous and mental disorders.”33 Geiger used events he could observe
in the world to back his assertions about the movies’ harmful effects. He wrote,
Evidence of the demoralizing and degrading effects of the sex-inspired picture
on the youth of the land is seen on every hand. Immodest clothes, indecent
dancing, promiscuous drinking parties, midnight joy rides—these things are
not superficial and isolated evils to be railed at and combated one by one.
They are rather an expression of the spirit of the times, a Spirit of immodesty
and irreverence and lawlessness generated in part, at least, by the unparalleled
assault which, for a decade or more, has been made, through the motion
picture, on society’s most valuable assets, namely, its innocency and its
youth.34
In addition to Showing concern about the influence of the movies on society,
Geiger’s article reveals what were considered to be the commonsense presumptions of
the time. These presumptions include: 1) races are at different points of evolution; 2)
evolution of races occurs in stages; 3) youth is innocent; 4) people develop in stages
and have instincts appropriate to their age. Furthermore, he thought that suggestion

(believing something to be true in the absence of logic) was a threat to the innocence

 

’2 Joseph Roy Geiger, “The Effects of the Motion Picture on the Mind and Morals of the Young,”
International Journal of Ethics, 34 (October 1923): 69-83.

3’ Geiger, “Effects of Motion Picture,” 73.

3‘ Geiger, “Effects of Motion Picture,” 79.

157

of youth. Geiger believed that the young were out of control because of the influence
of the movies.
A Gordon Dewey, “On Methods in the Study of Politics 1” and “On Methods in the

Study of Politics 11”

 

in Political Science Quarterly in 1923 and 1924

 

In two Political Science Quarterly articles in 1923 and 1924, A. Gordon
Dewey argued against common will, existing national interest, and the influence of
most individuals while arguing for a public opinion of intertwined formation and
expression.” Dewey presented an intricate description of a vast network of political
activity. He carefully defined his terms and the relationships among various factors in
political action. He wrote,

‘Public opinion’ grows by a process of accretion, expression of opinion by

individuals and groups helping to form, in fact as a rule being deliberately

intended to form, the opinions of others. Thus it is incorrect to segregate
consideration of the ‘formation’ from that of the ‘expression’ of public
opinion. At the same time, expressions of opinion provoke contrary opinions;
hence, save in times of crisis, we have turmoil and conflict, rather than
‘common will’.“5

Essential participants in this slow formation and expression of public opinion are those

Sharing common interests who join to influence the government, Dewey wrote. He

 

’5 A. Gordon Dewey, “On Methods in the Study of Politics 1,” Political Science Quarterly, 38
(1923): 636-651; “On Methods in the Study of Politics II” Political Science Quarterly, 39 (1924): 218-
233.

158

accounts for a few elite individuals who count as an interest group by themselves and
contrasts their influence with that of most individuals. He wrote, “Incidentally, we
should note that although the weight of the average individual in the community is
almost negligible, yet certain persons, by virtue of their prestige and strategic
situation, may be considered virtually as interest groups in themselves.”37

Dewey wrote the most intricate description of the process of forming public
opinion among the articles in Childs’ syllabus covered so far. He argued that his study
method, though complex, was necessarily so. He saw interest groups as the critical
force for change, and observed that some were active in seeking to have their interest
installed in the law. In pursuing their goal, Dewey wrote, interest groups created the
public opinion that others wanted to measure. Dewey saw the need to understand
public opinion as something made, and not something discovered. He wrote,

' Here we are dealing with the problem of initiative in political action, the
dynamic elements in the formation of effective opinion. This is a stimulating
evolution from our previous passive treatment, which looked upon ‘Public
Opinion’, ‘the Common Will,’ as something to be discovered rather than
something which is made, as a homogeneous mass rather than a heterogeneous
complex of ingredients (emphasis in original)?"

Dewey saw nationalism as a subsidiary study. He began with a conception of

nationalism as a state of mind and an aspect of public opinion rather than a matter of

 

3‘ Dewey, “On Methods in the Study of Politics,” 649-650.
3" Dewey, “On Methods in the Study of Politics,” 640.
3' Dewey, “On Methods in the Study of Politics,” 651.

159

race or legal status, showing us that nationalism was usually a matter of race or legal
status. For Dewey, studying nationalism is the same as determining and studying
national interests. Dewey wrote, “The problem then becomes one of identifying
interests nation-wide in scope, as opposed to others merely sectional, and studying
their activities.”39 It is important to note the change in the consideration of
nationalism. In addition to the shift from considering nationalism to be a matter of
race or legal status to considering it to be a matter of national interests (which were
groups), nationalism was severed from the idea of a common will. There could be
nothing like a common will for Dewey. His method, through his definitions,
precluded it.

William Ernest Hocking, “Leaders and Led”

 

in The Yale Review in 1924

 

A few good leaders from the best blood lines were needed to lead the mass of
people who were lacking, or democracy might be forced off of the Stage of history,
according to William Ernest Hocking, writing in The Yale Review in 1924."0 He
reviewed the ways in which political leaders were chosen and the pitfalls inherent in
the process of choosing. He explained, “The sum of it iS—and this is perhaps the most
hopeful thing that can be said—that the level of our choices is still far below the level

of our possibilities.’”I

 

3’ Dewey, “On Methods in the Study of Politics 11,” 229.
4° William Ernest Hocking, “Leaders and Led,” The Yale Review, 13 (July 1924): 625-641.
" Hocking, “Leaders and Led,” 641.

160

Hocking believed that race and nation were passed along in the blood, and he
used the language of breeding to make several points, including leadership. He wrote,
“For aught that the facts can show, the emergence of leaders of the first rank has
nothing to do with forms of government and election: it may be a matter of the virility
of the national stock—its power to beget men of gauge and temper to govern, and of
every thousand or so bred to give one or two training that does not spoil them on the
way?‘2 Nationality was conceived as being bred and therefore race-based. Hocking
reflected one of Gellner’s principles of nationalism when he wrote about co-nationality
and the desirability of having the genus of the group in the leader. Hocking wrote, “A
certain sort of likeness in its leaders the public does indeed demand—such likeness as
is implied in co-nationality. This is true precisely because some curbing or driving is
implied in all governing; and in a democratic state it is necessary that when the leader
controls, the people shall be able to conceive that they control themselves—which is
possible in so far as they see their genus reproduced in him?"3

Hocking acknowledged the strong tie of race and class interests, and he h0ped
for a visionary leader who could rise above separate interests. He wrote,

And the time must come when we Shall also demand representatives who will

represent more than their locality as they represent more than their party. Each

one of them must under take to represent the whole nation, and the nation as
part of humanity. For he who sets his country above humanity will set his

locality about his country, and will end by setting himself on top of the pile.

 

‘2 Hocking, “Leaders and Led,” 627.

161

 

The cure of this Situation lies at all times in the hands of the voters; but it

implies some improvement in their wills, and not alone in their intellects.“

Comparing nationalities to breeds was commonplace in nineteenth-century
racialist thinking.‘5 The metaphor depended on an assumption that different qualities
were linked to a specific race and nationality. Hocking also used nation with an
unusual connotation, linking it to all of humanity, and thus contradicting most uses of
nation as a unique subset.
Emory S. Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins” and “Measuring Social
Distance”
in Journal of Applied Sociology in 1924 and 1925

Emory S. Bogardus was the leading scholar researching the concept of social
distance, and his work from the mid-1920s appeared in Childs’ syllabus. Two articles
in the Journal of Applied Sociology describe data he collected from college students,
businessmen, and teachers. These articles are remarkable for their direct treatment of
race and the way in which they reveal the intertwining of the conceptions of race,
language, and nation.“

Bogardus had two-hundred forty-eight graduate and upper-division social
psychology students rank-order twenty-four races into three lists based on the

students’ feelings of friendliness, neutrality, or antipathy toward the group. Then each

 

‘3 Hocking, “Leaders and Led,” 632.

“ Hocking, “Leaders and Led,” 639.

‘5 Robert J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London and New
York: Routledge, 1995).

162

of the Students selected the group for which he or she felt the most antipathy and wrote
a description of the circumstance under which the feeling originated and developed.
Bogardus explained that half of the students’ descriptions devoted half of the amount
written to a “generalization and denunciation’”7 that he had instructed the students to
avoid.

Bogardus took the definition of social distance and the idea for his study from
Robert E. Park.48 Citing Park, he wrote, “Social distance refers to ‘the grades and
degrees of understanding and intimacy which characterize pre-social and social
relations generally.’ The following experiments were conducted to find out just how
and why these grades of understanding and intimacy vary?"9

He listed the self-described twenty-four racial descents of the parents of the
students doing the ranking and expressed surprise that many students were uncertain
about their racial decent.’0 Bogardus called it a surprising low ebb in racial
consciousness because many of the students were uncertain of their “racial descent?"
The students’ lists were dominated by what many people might now call Northern
Europeans. Six-hundred-four descent lines were listed from the English (174),

Scotch(sic) (120), Irish (109), German (86), French (65) and Dutch (50). Fifty-eight

racial descent lines were mentioned eight or fewer times, and they contain a wider

 

‘6 Emory S. Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins, " Journal of Applied Sociology, 9 (January -
February 1924/1925): 216-226; “Measuring Social Distance, “Journal of Applied Sociology 9 (March-
April 1924/1925): 299-308.

‘7 Bogardus, “Social Distance and its Origin,” 226.

" Bogardus, “Social Distance and its Origin,” 216, f. 1 & 2.

‘9 Bogardus, “Social Distance and its Origin,” 216.

5° Bogardus, “Social Distance and its Origin,” 217.

5' Bogardus, “Social Distance and its Origins,” 217.

163

a /_

selection of descent from Canadian (8), Spanish (8), Swedish (8), Dane (4), Chinese
(6), Italian (4), Jew-German (4), Jew-Russian (3), Japanese (3), Hungarian (2),
Mulatto (2), Negro (2), Norwegian (2), Russian (2), Armenian (1), Bulgarian (1),

F rench-Canadian (1), and Filippino (sic) (1).

This list, of the races from which the college students in the mid-19205 thought
they had descended, vividly displayed the common sense of the time. Additionally, it
Showed the mainstream, intellectual, academic common sense as evidenced by
Bogardus’ surprise at the low ebb in racial consciousness, along with the students’
high feelings of antipathy toward other races. Race was thoroughly confounded with
nation, language, or religion, and this conception of race was believed to be associated
with positive and negative feelings. The categories of Jew-German and Jew-Russian
are particularly telling. In this case, nation or language separated religious and kinship
ties. Mulatto was a distinctive mix of two races.

In addition to the self-described descent races, Bogardus added a dozen more
races to make his list of racial groups for scoring by the experimental subjects. They
were Armenian, Bulgarian, Bohemian, Canadian, Chinese, Czecho-Slovak, Dane,
Dutch, English, French, F rench-Canadian, Finn, German, Greek, Hindu, Hungarian,
Irish, Italian, Japanese, Jew-German, Jew-Russian, Mexican, Mullatto, Negro,
Norwegian, Portuguese, Filipino, Polish, Roumanian, Russian, Servian, Scotch(sic),

Spanish, Syrian, Swedish, and Turk.’2

 

’2 Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins,” 216.

164

At the top of the list of races toward which the most students felt the greatest
antipathy were the Turks, who were most disliked by 119 students; followed by Negro
by 79; Mulatto, 75; Japanese, 61; Hindu, 44; Jew-German, 42; Mexican, 41; Jew-
Russian, 41; German, 38; and Chinese, 30. No Students felt antipathy toward several
so-called races. They were Canadian, Dane, Dutch, F rench-Canadian, Norwegian, and
Scotch(sic). The remainder of the races on the list of “Races Against which the
Greatest Antipathy was Expressed” were ranked between 19 and 2.53 Seven of the ten
most disliked groups were represented in the class.

Bogardus found four main categories into which the written responses of the
students describing their greatest antipathy could be grouped. The largest group relied
on what Bogardus called traditions and accepted opinion. He wrote, “It is clear after
reading the data that hearsay evidence coming from both one’S personal friends and
from relative strangers in one’s own ‘universe of discourse’ who possess prestige in
one’s own eyes are widely influential in creating social distance?" The students took
their antipathy from parents, teachers, and returned missionaries. Bogardus thought
the students who relied on “second-hand and hearsay racial reports’”5 had “entered

”,6 .

imaginatively rnto the experience and the experience had become the student’s

own.’7 Bogardus was extremely skeptical about these reports relying on second-hand

 

’3 Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins,” 218.
5‘ Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins,” 219.
5’ Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins,” 219.
5‘ Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins,” 219.
’7 Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins,” 219.

165

information. He worried that they could be incorrect. He assumed that it was
somehow possible to have correct reasons for racial antipathy

Bogardus thought there could be antipathy toward a specific race based on
personal experience alone. His second category was “fiightening childhood
experiences with another race.” He wrote, “Unpleasant racial sense impressions,
personally experienced in the early years of life are many. Sometimes fear is aroused;
again, disgust. In either case there is a sensory image that is often described as
‘horrifying.’ This fact that these images were experienced in childhood gives them a
more or less permanent character (emphasis in original)?” The third category of
personal experience was a childhood experience of disgust or disgust combined with
fear.

Bogardus found that fear and disgust were prevalent among those reporting
experiences with another race as adults. He believed general antipathy toward a race
was a generalization of a personal experience. In describing the category of adult
experiences, Bogardus showed his assumption of the development of a race and the
way in which individual members of a race might be at different stages of
development. He wrote, “Unpleasant race impressions experienced in adulthood are
also common. As a rule these anti-racial attitudes represent a generalization of
experiences with one or a few individuals of the given race. Although there may be a
recognition that the given experiences have been related to the less socially developed

members of the race in question or from non-typical individuals the aversion is likely

 

5' Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins,” 221.

166

to spread to the whole race (emphasis in original)?” Bogardus assumed that there is a
rank ordering of races, and within that order, a further ordering of the members of
those races in terms of social development.

In a second article on social distance appearing in the next issue of The Journal
of Applied Sociology, Bogardus asked businessmen and public school teachers to tell
him to which activities they would admit members of each race. Again, nation, race,
language, and religion were confounded as racial descent. Moreover, he was unable to
determine whether feelings toward other races were inherited.

One-hundred-ten young businessmen and public school teachers claimed a
variety of racial descent including English (60), German (31), Irish (28), French (24),
Scotch (sic) (22), Dutch (15), Scotch-Irish (1-7), Welsh (6), Canadian (4), Chinese (3),
Swedish (3), Norwegian (3), Japanese (2), Jew-German (2), Spanish (2), Jew-Russian
(1), Filipino (1), Pole (1), and Indian (1).‘’0

The subjects were asked to mark aforrn indicating to which degree of social
intimacy they would allow each of the groups. The social distance list included seven
steps: “To close kinship by marriage,” “To my club as personal chums,” “To my street
as neighbors,” “To employment in my occupation in my country,” “To citizenship in
my country,” “As visitors only to my country,” and “Would exclude from my

country.”6|

 

’9 Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins,” 224.
6° Bogardus, “Measuring Social Distance,” 299. These are Bogardus’ descriptions of races.
" Bogardus, “Measuring Social Distance,” 301.

167

Bogardus thought admission to more intimate groups provided wider social
contact and more opportunities for assimilation."2 He discovered the raters allowed
those like themselves into the most intimate social contact of kinship by marriage.
Additionally he found the same type of rating among what he called the “high” races.63
High races were those from what would now be called Northern European. He
explained, “A Significant correlation is at once obvious between racial membership of
the raters and the extent of social contact range is to be noted in Table 111. Where the
racial membership is low and the range high, as in the case of the Canadians, the
relationship of the Canadians to the English and other ‘high’ races among the raters is
the chief explanation?“

Bogardus prepared several types of indices from his data. The teachers
allowed closer contact to more groups than did the businessmen. Gender distinctions
were not made. It was not possible to determine if all of the businessmen were
actually men, although it seems likely. No gender designation was given for the
teachers. The groups with the most allowed intimacy were the Canadians, Scotch-
Irish, English, Scotch (sic) and Irish. Those with the least amount of intimacy, or the
firrthest social distance as a group, were the Turks, Hindus, Mulattoes, Koreans, and
Negroes.”

In a third article in the same volume of the Journal of Applied Sociology,

Bogardus asked respondents to tell him about the changes in their opinions about

 

‘2 Bogardus, “Measuring Social Distance,” 302.
‘3 Bogardus, “Measuring Social Distance,” 300.
“ Bogardus, “Measuring Social Distance,” 300.

168

social distance in the intervening decade. His respondents maintained their opinions.
Those they saw as foreigners were dirty, ugly, stupid, and immoral and were born that
way, but some of the foreigners might be able to overcome inborn Shortcomings. His
respondents believed racial traits were inherited.“5

Bogardus was the editor of the Journal of Applied Sociology in the mid-19205,
and his articles about social distance, and those of his graduate students at the
University of Southern California, consistently appeared in its pages. The three
articles from volume nine reveal a great deal about the commonsense understandings
of the upper class of the time. A number of assumptions are apparent. Public opinion
was individual opinion and something that could be determined by asking people
about their opinion. Bogardus assumed that there would be differences in feelings
between races. In setting out to determine the how and why of these differences, he
would have assumed that there would be feelings and that those feelings would vary
among respondents. He and his respondents primarily defined race by nation.

Race, defined as national origin in most cases, was assumed to be important.
First, Bogardus was studying the feelings of one race for another. Second, he was
surprised at the students’ lack of “racial consciousness.” Third, he remarked on the
relationship between the students’ lack of their own racial consciousness and the
vehemence of their dislike for certain other races. Fourth, Bogardus and his

respondents assumed a rank order of racial development and the desirability of

 

‘5 Bogardus, “Measuring Social Distance,” 307.
‘6 Emory Bogardus, “Analyzing Changes in Public Opinion,” Journal of Applied Sociology 9 (1923-
1924): 373-381.

169

assimilation. They also assumed that some individual members of a particular race
might not be as highly developed as other members of the race.

Previously, we saw an assumption that actions came from character, and
character came from being a particular national. Bogardus’ articles show him making
the same assumptions about race-nation differences and looking for the ways in which
individuals learned their assumptions about race-nation differences. At least in part,
he appears to have broken with the assumption that race-nation differences are inborn,
while at the same time he maintained the idea of a rank ordering of race by social
development. The assumptions of an inborn feeling and a feeling learned through
experience are included in the articles. He wrote, “Moreover, this generalization habit
was usually on the basis, first of tradition and opinion [others opinions], and second,
of experiences with a few individuals from the lower levels of a “despised race,” or
with a few better class individuals showing their worst natures to their ‘enemies’—
something not necessarily peculiar to any race.” He continued, “While there are
defrrrite feeling bases of an inherited nature that lead naturally to race antipatlries,
unscientific generalizations upon a few personal outstanding adverse experiences or
upon many adverse traditions is an outstanding datum.”67

Bogardus conceived of public opinion as being individually based. He was
examining the opinions of individuals toward members of other races. He believed
that changes in individual opinion as they accumulated constitute a change in public

opinion. He thought that individual opinion toward members of a race could change

 

‘7 Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins,” 226.

170

only slowly from unfavorable to favorable, yet individual opinion could change
quickly from favorable to unfavorable. A similar process was at work concerning
public opinion. He wrote,

Changes in public opinion seem to operate similarly. It takes many proofs and

a long time element to change public opinion from an unfavorable to a

favorable basis, while in a few instances, perhaps no more than one, will shift

public opinion into unfavorable reactions of a relatively lasting nature. These
few instances, looming large in one’s personal life, or played up in the
newspapers, blind one to the thousand and one favorable traits of a the given
race.“

The experience related in a newspaper story is equated to a personal experience.

The articles by Bogardus reveal the continuing presence of racial assumptions
and vividly display the jumbled nature of the concept of nation with race, language,
religion, and skin color at the time. Public opinion might have been inherited and
could be changed by experience. Public opinion about Specific race-nation members
could be changed as individuals changed their views through experience.
Floyd H. Allport and DA. Hartman, “The measurement and motivation of atypical
opinion in a certain group”
in The American Political Science Review in 1925

Floyd H. Allport and D. A. Hartman explored a method aimed at discovering

whether psychological characteristics produce a radical trend in an individual’s

 

" Bogardus, “Analyzing Changes in Public Opinion,” 380.

171

political and social convictions.” They were searching for the traits and motives of an
individual personality that might result in radical opinions. Writing in The American
Political Science Review in 1925, they dismissed the use of yes-and-no questions on
social issues and provided a method to measure the strength of an individual
respondent’s opinion.

The questions to which students gave their opinion and indicated the strength
of that opinion included: The League of Nations Question, The Question of the
Qualifications of President Coolidge, The Question of Distribution of Wealth, The
Question of Legislative Control Over the Supreme Court, The Prohibition Question,
The Ku Klux Klan Question, and The Question of Grafi in Politics.70 The extreme
answers to the League of Nations question were, “We should uphold the Monroe
Doctrine and our traditional policy of isolation from all foreign entanglements. We
should stay out of the League of Nations,” and “We should not only join the League,
but should work toward the ideal of doing away with the sovereignty of separate
nations, and of establishing a super-govemment, or world-State.” The extreme
answers to the Ku Klux Klan question were, “The Klan is wrong in principles and
methods and Should be denounced by political parties; steps to suppress it should be
taken by the government,” and “The Klan is absolutely correct in principles and

meth .”

 

‘9 Floyd H. Allport and D. A. Hartman, “The measurement and motivation of atypical opinion in a
certain group” The American Political Science Review 19 (1925): 73 5-760.
7° Allport and Hartman, “Measurement and Motivation,” 750-754.

172

For Allport and Hartman, the issues were social and controversial. They were
looking for the motives in a personality that lead to an extreme view held by an
individual—an individual opinion. The controversial nature of the social issues
selected for testing was assumed. Race and nation were both on the social issue
agenda in 1925. The range of their questions reveals a wide range of possible opinions
on these issues about nation and race. Opinion was individual opinion. They Show
the range of beliefs (at least as far ranging as Allport and Hartman could imagine
them) current at the time.

William Seal Carpenter, “Methods of Political Reasoning”
in The American Journal of Sociology in 1925

William Seal Carpenter argued for the primacy of the field of sociology and its
task of making students in all social sciences understand each other.71 His argument
for the importance of sociology was echoed by Bernard in the same volume of The
American Journal of Sociology.72 Carpenter assumed that national character, race, and
color were three separate factors in politics.73 He wrote, “National character has a
substratum of prejudices which are readily exploited by demagogue and jingoist.
Differences of race and color are therefore made the justification for intemecine

struggles which in each age become more devastating?"

 

7' William Seal Carpenter, “Methods of Political Reasoning” The American Journal of Sociology 31
(1925): 213-226.

7’ L. L. Bernard, “Scientific Method and Social Progress ” The American Journal of Sociology 31
(July l925):l-18.

7’ Carpenter, “Methods of Political Reasoning,” 214.

7‘ Carpenter, “Methods of Political Reasoning,” 214.

173

Arthur N. Holcombe, “Round Table on Political Statistics: The Measurement of Public
Opinion”

in The American Political Science Review in 1925

 

Writing in The American Political Science Review in 1925, Arthur Holcombe
reported on the discussion of the roundtable on political statistics.75 The roundtable’s
topic was the measurement of public opinion. Even before the discussion began, the
roundtable members were faced with strong disagreements. He wrote, “Some
members of the round table believed that there is no such thing as public Opinion;
others believed in its existence but doubted their ability to define it with sufficient
precision for scientific purposes. Others again, more sanguine or perhaps more
credulous, believed that the term could be defined, but were of different minds
concerning the kind of definition that Should be adopted?“5 Faced with the
disagreement, the group decided to focus on the nature of opinion. They hoped that a
common understanding of public opinion might result from that discussion.
Following a discussion, the definition of opinion was found to have three essential
points: “(1) opinion need not be the result of a rational process; (2) it need not include
an awareness of choice; and (3) it must be sufficiently clear or definite to create a

”77 The group was unable to

disposition to act upon it under favorable circumstances.
decide when an opinion was public, and it had several points of disagreement. The

points of disagreement were the following: “(1) whether there is and must of necessity

 

7’ Arthur N. Holcombe, “Round Table on Political Statistics: The Measurement of Public Opinion,”
The American Political Science Review 19 (1925): 123-126.
7‘ Holcombe, “Round Table,” 123.

174

 

be a single public opinion, or whether there may be a number of public opinions upon
a given question; (2) whether opinion is public because of the subject-matter to which
it relates or of the kind of persons who hold it; (3) what part of the public must concur
in an opinion to make it a public opinion; and (4) must there be acquiescence by those
who do not concur.”7s
The roundtable members decided to work on figuring out the technical means

to measure individual opinion before deciding on the exact definition of public
opinion. Holcombe described their thinking,

After some discussion of these points, it was agreed that an exact definition of
public opinion might not be needed until after the technical problem of
measuring the opinions of individual members of the public had been disposed
of. It was decided therefore that the round table might well proceed to consider
the problem of measuring opinion, especially that relating to political matters,
and avoid the use of the term public opinion, if possible.79
The disagreements among the members of the roundtable revealed the

multifaceted inflections of the use of the term public opinion. For public opinion to
reflect a collective sovereignty, there could be only one public opinion. If it is
necessary for all or most of the public to hold an opinion to make it public opinion, the

meaning may retain its connection to sovereignty and nation. If opinion is public

because of the subject matter, then it is related to issues presumed to affect all of the

 

7’ Holcombe, “Round Table,” 123.
7' Holcombe, “Round Table,” 123.
7’ Holcombe, “Round Table,” 123-124.

175

people. The question of what part of the public must concur and whether acquiescence
by those who do not concur is necessary reflects the fuzzy line of conflict between
idealized nationalism and actual functioning politics in nation-states. If the people
made the nation because of shared characteristics, traditions, culture, and history, then
the degrees of difference that can be allowed within the whole can become a problem.
Just the beginning of the discussion of public opinion measurement by the committee
members at the National Conference on the Science of Politics reveals how loaded was
the term and how multiple its meanings were in the mid l920s. The group divided
twenty-three methods of measuring opinion into four categories: (1) official election
returns, (2) deliberately, but unofficially, gathered samples of bodies of opinion, (3)
voluntary or spontaneous expressions of opinion, and (4) data from legislative bodies
and acts of public officials possessing representative character."o

Votes on issues and candidates were seen as the most comprehensive and
accurate way to measure opinion. This had the added benefit of providing records
useful for statistical analysis. Holcombe wrote, “It is the only method which has been
used in such a way as to furnish records readily available for statistical analysis, and it
is the only one which considers the whole adult population?" In other words, the
method that worked best was the one that met standards of measurement. Still without
an agreed definition they began to look for the best way to measure. Election returns
provided individual opinions on candidates and issues, at least in a yes/no way. As

Holcombe wrote, the group was aware of some of the limitations of their method. The

 

'° Holcombe, “Round Table,” 124.

I76

limitations were the following: (1) a misleading simplicity, (2) failure to measure
intensity of opinion, (3) takes no account of non-voters.82

“The second group of methods for measuring opinion includes particularly the
taking of straw votes and the use of questionnaires,” Holcombe wrote. The discussion
by the members of the roundtable focused on questionnaire problems that included: (1)
“over-representation of the interested, the literate and the well-to-do,” (2) “the fairness
of phrasing,” (3) “the possibility of plural voting,” (4) “the presence or absence of
discussion,” (5) “the maturity of the answer,” (6) “the durability of the opinions so
measured,” and (7) “the desirability of secrecy?‘33 To social scientists today, most of
these problems might be divided into sampling problems, question problems, and
unmeasured differences among respondents. The list of problems revealed an
awareness of the multiple layers of meaning attached to the concept of opinion, in
politics especially. The presence of discussion was directly tied to a reasoning citizen,
and if the nation was presumed to be made up of individuals who are members of the
nation by choice, as Hobsbawm would have it,“ then they must talk to each other.

The third group of methods included spontaneous expressions and
propagandist organizations. Spontaneous expressions included public hearings,
voluntary party enrollment, campaign contributions, speeches of public men, lobbying,
petitions, circulation of the press, editorials, letters to the press, public meetings,

private research groups, and the behavior of crowds. The round table found some of

 

" Holcombe, “Round Table,” 124.
'2 Holcombe, “Round Table,” 124.
'3 Holcombe ,“Round Table,” 125.

177

the spontaneous expressions of opinion were not important because they could not be
measured. Holcombe wrote, “It was found that certain of these, for exarrrple, letters to
the press and private research groups, are of little importance, as being at best
incapable of exact measurement?”
Time limited the opportlurity of the members of the roundtable to discuss types
of spontaneous expression of opinion they found important and measurable, and they
decided to focus on propaganda organizations. Holcombe wrote, “Their rapidity of
growth, and their distribution, while susceptible of measurement, are of varying
significance?“ They were interested in ways of figuring out just how much a
propaganda organization could cause individuals to act. They agreed that it was
important to know the facts about an organization with the objective of influencing
opinion on public issues. Holcombe wrote, “The round table was unanimously of the
opinion that the public should know the facts concenring the membership and finances
of all organizations designed to influence opinion on public questions.”87
Shining through the entire report on the roundtable discussion of statistics was
an assumption of the value of measurement, and equally strong was an awareness of
the expressions of opinion that were not measurable. The alternatives to opinion that
could be measured were not yet dismissed. Holcombe’s article reveals how difficult it

was to cover over the multiple meanings of public opinion to facilitate bringing the

matter of measuring individual opinion to the foreground and to give measurement

 

" Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 18.
'5 Holcombe “Round Table,” 125.
'6 Holcombe “Round Table,” 125.

178

privilege over other meanings. Most telling, one entire category was given over to
spontaneous expressions of opinion, and the list reveals many ways of thinking about
opinion.

Norman C. Meier, “Motives in Voting: A Study in Public Opinion

 

in The American Journal of Sociology in 1925

Norman C. Meier set out to test the assumption that the common will is based
on reasoned judgements about an individual or an issue and is expressed as public
opinion in an election. He believed that he had discovered that the common will was
better understood as the consummation of mass suggestion. He equated an election
campaign to an advertising campaign and saw the newspaper as the most effective
propaganda tool. In his closely argued and thoroughly referenced article filled with
precise definitions of terms, he offered no careful explanation for fellow feeling or
like-mindedness.88 Meier wanted to test the assumption that democracy rests on the
consent of the governed. He thought it was necessary to find out how consent was
gained. He believed that only a professional campaigner would have some
experiential knowledge of how their candidates won. Meier equated an election
victory to an expression of public opinion, and he saw his work as a beginning to the
study of the mechanisms of public opinion.

Meier asked people to evaluate campaign messages. The campaign messages,

as the candidate presented them, were listed for each of three candidates. He gave

 

'7 Holcombe “Round Table,” 126.
” Norman C. Meier, “Motives in Voting: A Study in Public Opinion,” The American Journal of
Sociology 31 (September 1925): 199-212.

179

three pieces of paper, each containing a list of the messages from one candidate, to
more than 1,000 people including advanced undergraduate students and professional
people in five states. Additionally, the respondents were asked to list reasons for their
vote. Each campaign message was later labeled with one or more motivation. Meier
relied on Floyd Allport for four categories of motivation with which to label the
candidates’ messages and the reasons given by voters. Motivational labels included
self-interest, mutual understanding, fear, and safety.

Self- interest is, he wrote, “the dictum that one is more concerned about things
which affect himself than any others. Man acts in accord with what he thinks his
interest to be, whether from sound premises or otherwise.”89 Mutual understanding or
sympathy was not well-understood according to Meier. He wrote, “This term in social
psychology is variously defined as ‘consciousness of kind,’ ‘fellow—feeling,’ and
‘solidarity.’ There is in this sense no connotation of pity or compassion but merely the
feeling of unity, oneness, like-mindedness or mutual understanding which members of
the same group have for one another, expressible in the phrase, ‘one of us’?’° Meier
did not explain the concept of mutual understanding any further, though he did offer
an example based in a city-country dichotomy. He wrote, “Farmers favor that
candidate who is or is believed to be a genuine ‘dirt farmer’ ’; the candidate who is not
a farmer himself but who would have the farmer vote visits the old homestead, dons

overalls, and rides around on the old hayrack, fully exposed to the sun and a battery of

 

'9 Meier, “Motives in Voting,” 201.
9° Meier, “Motives in Voting,” 201.

180

movie cameras?” Considering his elaborate definition of common will, motivations,
and public opinion, he would have believed that his readers would have a Shared
understanding of like-mindedness. (Writing in another sociology journal, Bogardus
used like-kind with a nation-race connotation”)

Safety and fear are linked motives, according to Meier. Fear is the third
motive for analysis, and Meier equated current-day fear to fear of lack of income
through being out of work. Safety, the final motive, is an interpretation of the fear
response. Safety, according to Meier, is evoked to convince the voter that a cherished
institution is endangered by the opposing candidate’s victory.

Meier defined the mechanism of public opinion formation in the political area.
He wrote, “The psychological mechanisms are suggestion, imitation, and propaganda,
defining the latter as complex systematic suggestions directed toward some ulterior
end. Suggestion and imitation—cardinal principles of French social psychology—
explains how the average person comes into possession of the bulk of his beliefs.” He
was relying on Le Bon’s The Crowd, Tarde’s L ’opinion et lafoule, and Trotter’s
Instincts of the Herd. The process of opinion formation is unconscious, Meier wrote,
although the individual would attribute the outcome to his or her own reasoning. In
other words, an individual might believe that he or she was reasoning and say that he
or she had reasons, but his or her opinion actually would be the result of suggestion
and imitation. Meier’s common man was anything but wise. The theoretical

foundation on which Meier relied precluded the possibility of a reasoning citizen.

 

9' Meier, “Motives in Voting,” 201.

181

Meier equated the processes of an advertising campaign with that of a national
election. For Meier, customers and voters are equivalent, and both are unreasoning.
Advertisers use certain techniques to control the behavior of customers, to persuade
them to buy products. Therefore, if political campaigns were to employ the same
techniques, they could control the behavior of voters and persuade them to vote for a
candidate. He wrote, “Certainly it is evident that if affirmation and repetition of
simple ideas produces contagion and wholesale acceptance in advertising campaigns,
the same out-come should be expected in political campaigns when the same methods
are used in the same channels and on the same people?” That was a critical “if” for
democratic theory.

Meier claimed that the newspaper is “the most effective agency of
suggestion?“ According to Meier, the newspaper is effective because it is daily and
therefore repetitious. The same ideas are presented over and over in the paper in
different forms. He wrote that the newspaper fulfills the requirements of propaganda.
He continued, “Among which are a period of time; daily presentation, affording
opportunity for repetition of the same idea in varying forms; translation into graphic
form (cartoon, portrayal of idealized character and distortion of opponent’s);
‘statistical studies’ carefirlly doctored to make the desired point; and paid political

material appearing as news items?”

 

9’ Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins.”
9’ Meier, “Motives in Voting,” 203-204.

9‘ Meier, “Motives in Voting,” 204.

9’ Meier, “Motives in Voting,” 204.

182

Apparently, it was assumed by Meier and his readers that there was something
questionable about the use of statistics in newspaper articles. It could have been that
Meier believed that the statistics were below the standard applied to academic writing,
or he might have believed that studies were deliberately placed by a campaign to give
the credibility of numbers to a campaign claim. Whatever the precise reason, Meier
was skeptical of the use of statistics in political stories in the newspaper. In addition,
the position of the newspaper was Shifted by Meier from the positive agent of control
it had been for earlier scholars—Bullard, Stead and Shepard for example—to an
excellent medium for propaganda. Meier concluded, “The successful campaign was
the one which dealt least with rational motives and most with simple appeals directed
toward the arousal of specific instinctive, emotional, and habit pattem-responses.”96 In
referring to the significance of his data he wrote that it “lay open to question anew the
fundamental assumption of democracy that there be accorded every member of the
electorate adequate and relatively unbiased information for his guidance in considering
men and issues.”97

Meier also noted a difference in the appeals made by the campaigns.
Successful campaigns made appeals that are readily classifiable into psychological
categories. Additionally, groupings of Similar reasons were given by the successfirl
candidate’s supporters. Meier found it necessary to define public opinion as an
expression of common will, however, he did not find it necessary to explain his

assumption that the results of an election were synonymous with an expression of

 

9° Meier, “Motives in Voting,” 210.

183

public opinion. He could assume that public opinion was equated with an election
result. Meier worried that the common will was based on emotional appeals that were
engineered by those who could spend enough money to influence the press, and he
assumed that the press had tremendous influence on voters because of the repetition of
the candidate’s message. Finally, he did not mention nationality or race. He may be
alluding to it, however, because one of four categories of motivation that he used was
“sympathy or mutual understanding.” The example he gave for a feeling of being
“one of us,” involves a politician seeking the vote of farmers and puts him in the rural
scene for the benefit of movie cameras. He also described the similarity of views held
by men and women among his respondents.

Meier was overtly concerned about the lack of reasoning done by voters.
Specifically, he was concerned that money spent on a consistent psychologically
powerful message would pervert the democratic system. In the last line of his article
he wrote, “May we suppose that so long as huge sums are expended in creating
attitudes and issues dwindle to leading people to have affection for a candidate, the
one-party system will prevail, and for such time as interested individuals contribute
the necessary funds?”98 It is only in this last sentence that Meier reveals his own
concern.

He had followed the protocol of social science until this final line. He had
relied upon theorists who had a dark and pessimistic view of individual human beings

to test an idea based on a hopeful and optimistic view of human reason. It would be

 

’7 Meier, “Motives in Voting,” 212.

184

impossible to find that individuals were reasoning, if the theoretical foundation for
their reasons were taken from theorists who expected a herd-like response.

Meier’s article also can be seen as a prescription for promotion. The
successful message, either from a candidate or for a product, must rely on repetition,
recency, and emotional reinforcement. Meier is the first author in Childs’ syllabus to
compare an advertising campaign for a product to a political campaign. Although he
is discouraged about the future of democracy by the outcome of his research, a person
who wanted to promote a candidate could read the article as scientifically based
advice. In fact, looking at the launch of the syndicated public opinion poll in
newspapers in 1935 by George Gallup, it is easy to see the Similarities to Meier’s
criticisms. Gallup’s poll results were presented several times per week. Newspapers
canied poll results in graphic and varying forms. Gallup determined the issues that
would receive the repetitious treatment.

W.T. Root, “The Psychology of Radicalism”
in Journal of A bnormal and Social Psychology in 1925

In an address to the Hungary Club in Pittsburgh in 1924, W. T. Root talked
about the psychology of radicalism. He discussed definitions of radicalism and
conservatism and placed those definitions in a historical context.99 During his talk, he
characterized his own historical period. He said, “By chance alone, we would

anticipate that a certain ntunber [of radicals] would become emotionalized over

 

9' Meier, “Motives in Voting," 212.
’9 W.T. Root, “The Psychology of Radicalism,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 19
(1925): 341-356.

185

 

 

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economic, racial, and national problems. But here are three fields in which social
prestige is clearly and drastically established. At present, acute national fervor has
replaced religious fanaticism: the credo is precisely defined, and any infringement
brings violent protest, with severest legal and mob action (emphasis in original)?‘00

Nationalism and race came into Root’s speech again as he discussed the radical
nature of science. He said, “Another thoroughly radical scientific concept is the
habitual practice of discounting the validity of all ideas that relate to the ego and the
emotions, either in ourselves or in others. Love, hate, fear, anger, jealousy, grief,
nationalism, race hatred, religious fervor, sexual complexeSl—how they do make the
stream of thought, reason playing but a faint obligato (sic)(emphasis in the original
text).”‘°'

Root portrayed public opinion as a majority consensus, and he saw public
opinion as powerful and difficult to resist. He equated going against public opinion
with extreme physical threat and found resistance to public opinion the more difficult.
He was describing the effort necessary to have the courage of one’s convictions when
he wrote, “The most daring physical courage in the front-line trenches WITH ONE’S
FELLOWMEN WITH HIM is comparatively easy, measured by the psychic courage
required to champion a cause with public opinion and the mediums for making and
arousing public opinion against one (emphasis in original)?’02 Root said few have any

idea of the pain of going against public opinion. He said, “Social ostracism is the

 

'°° Root, “Psychology of Radicalism,” 344-345.
'°‘ Root, “Psychology of Radicalism,” 353.
”2 Root, “Psychology of Radicalism,” 346.

186

most brutal of all tortures and some of its subtle refined aspects are more dreaded than
the fury of mob violence of a physical nature?”3
Root concluded by telling his listeners and readers that he believed all views
that were presented with a pragmatic attitude should be heard. He provided a list of
authors who met his standard. He said, “In each case they show integrity of thought,
and give evidences of relative freedom from emotional bias. It is needless to add that
a variety of contending views are presented and the acceptance of one would discard
others?'°‘ Included among his list of books and authors were Charles Beard, Charles
Darwin, Karl Marx, Lloyd George, John Dewey, Thorsten Veblen, Trotsky and James

105

Bryce. Root must have been speaking at a time when alternative points of view
were not much tolerated. His article gives insight to the continuing importance of race
at the same time nationalism was an intense social issue.
George A. Lundberg;The Newspaper and Public Opinion”
in Social Forces in 1926

For George Lundberg, race was relegated to a footnote in the first article
claiming the first use of data to test the assumption that a powerful press creates public
opinion and therefore votes on issues?"5 Lundberg summarized the traditional
assumption that, in a direct causal chain, the newspaper influences public opinion, and

public opinion causes a specific vote on a specific issue. He wrote, “One of the

conclusions very generally agreed on by writers in the field is the conclusion that the

 

'°’ Root, “Psychology of Radicalism,” 346.
'°" Root, “Psychology of Radicalism,” 356.
'°’ Root, “Psychology of Radicalism,” 356.

187

most powerful, if not the all important factor in influencing public Opinion, and
consequently the votes of a community, is the newspaper?”7 He never questioned the
idea that public opinion results in votes. He cited Robert Park for the suggestion that
newspapers might not have the influence traditionally assumed.

In spite of the traditional claims of the power of the press to influence public
opinion and therefore influence votes, Lundberg pointed out that the claim had not
been supported with data. He wrote,

So far as the present writer has been able to discover there are no scientific data

on the subject. The most that can be found is a considerable number of

opinions, many of them eloquently expressed. But brilliant style and great
learning will not permanently serve as a substitute for data. It is the purpose of
the present paper to approach quantitatively, one aspect of this problem,
namely, the question of the direct influence of newspapers on public opinion
on certain specific public issues.”'08
He asked a random sample of people in Seattle their views on four social issues and
which paper they read. He then compared their answers on the issues to the Stand on

the same issues taken by the newspaper. He concluded that the newspaper had little

influence on the opinions of readers on public issues and that the paper was more

 

'°‘ George A. Lundberg, “The Newspaper and Public Opinion,” Social Forces 4 ( 1926): 709-715.

'°7 Lundberg, “Newspaper and Public Opinion,” 709. His citations are as follows: V.S. Yarros, “The
press and Public Opinion,” The American Journal of Sociology (November 1899): 32; EC. Hayes,
“The Formation of Public Opinion,” Journal of Applied Sociology (September/October 1925; BR
Groves, “Social Problems and Education” 380 [complete reference]; W. Irvin, “The American
Newspaper.” Colliers (January 21, 1911): 18.

'°' Lundberg, “Newspaper and Public Opinion,” 710.

188

likely to reflect opinion than to make opinion. Public opinion was not defined, nor
was the link between public opinion and voting made explicit.

In a footnote to his method, he explained that the sample he drew was
compared to the white population of the city. He wrote, “The sample was compared
with the general adult white population of the city (according to the census of 1920)
with respect to nativity, citizenship, and occupations, and was found not to vary from
the general population in these characteristics, by more than 14 percent in any one
respect.”09 He gave no details about the selection of individuals to fit the “white”
category or his other categories.

William B. Munro, “The Worst Fundamentalism”

 

in Atlantic Monthly in 1926

 

In an Atlantic Monthly article in 1926, William B. Munro argued for an attack
on the maxims that Americans believed embodied the principals of democratic
govemment.”° In closing his article he wrote, “What we most need, therefore, is that
the oncoming generation Shall make war on fundamentalism in politics, just as
scholars of the past generation have assailed fundamentalism in religion. That is one
of the many herculean tasks that we pass along to the college graduates of to-day?”'

Munro began with a list of phrases and Slogans that he said had been handed

down through the literature of patriotism and had become somewhat like a biological

inheritance. A biological inheritance would not be subject to questioning. He wrote,

 

‘°’ Lundberg, “Newspaper and Public Opinion,” 710 footnote 7.
”° William B. Munro, “The Worst Fundamentalism,” Atlantic Monthly 138 (1926): 451-459.
'” Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism” 459

189

“Let me put together, in skeleton form, the political creed of the average American
citizen, the dogmas which he accepts as fundarrrental truths notwithstanding their
repugnance to the dictates of reason and to the teachings of experience. ‘Government
must rest on the consent of the governed.’ ‘Democracy is government by the whole
people.”’"2 After several more examples, he continued listing accepted fundamental
truths. He wrote, “’The rule of public opinion.’ ‘Political parties are groups of voters
who think alike and have a common program.’ And last but not least, ‘The equality of
all citizens before the law.”’”3
After explaining how few eligible voters actually vote, Munro further explored
several of the “propositions” in his “filndamentalist decalogue?”‘ For example, he
wrote, “Government must rest on the consent of the governed?”5 He continued, “This
rule, of course, does not apply to aliens, Negroes, Filipinos, or inhabitants of the
District of Columbia. The consent of the governed is a synonym for the will of the
majority, and the will of the majority is expressed by a plurality of those who take the
trouble to vote.”l ‘6
He considered public opinion to be merely—and obviously—the result of
persuasion by the politicians. He wrote, “What passes for public opinion, in perhaps
the majority of cases, is Simply the outcome of propaganda and counter-propaganda

working upon the traditions, prejudices, aversions or inertia of the people.” He said

 

”2 Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism” 452..
”3 Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism” 452.
”‘ Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism” 454.
”5 Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism” 454.
"6 Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism” 454.

190

that he was not using the word propaganda in a derogatory way. He also believed that
most people saw the world through stereotypes.
He told his readers what public opinion was not, and he eliminated quite a few
of the uses in the body of work examined in this study. He wrote,
Public opinion does not exude spontaneously from the cogitiations of the
multitude. It does not employ the rational conclusions of what psychologists
call ‘the group mind.’ In large measure it is a manufactured product, prepared
for the purpose of selling it to the people and marketed to them in the
accustomed way. We are prone to forget that you can sell an idea to the people
in the same way that you sell them any other commodity, from a Liberty Bond
to a breakfast food, and our politicians are the brokers who put through the _
sale.l '7
Munro began with the doctrine of human equality. He attacked it with biology,
education, and then the inequality of taxation. Munro turned to the consent of the
governed and pointed out some were not included. He also pointed out that the
consent of the governed was equated with the will of the majority. As he detailed it,
elections were decided by a plurality of the politically active. He explained,
Taking our state and municipal elections and averaging them for the country as
a whole, the figures show that the will of the people is regularly expressed by
less than twenty percent of our adult citizenship, or about ten per cent of the

population. What we have in fact, therefore, is not a government by the whole

 

”7 Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism” 455.

191

people, or by a majority of the people, or even by a majority of the registered

voters, but government by a mere plurality of the politically active.‘ '8
Munro wrote, “ We are asked to believe that public opinion rules in the United States.
It is the ultimate sovereign, the supreme law of the land.”' '9 Munro addressed the
source of the opinion that was expressed. He discounted reason; rather it was the
selling of ideas—or a campaign of education.

Munro made two major arguments about people and government. First, the
system of government does not actually function in accordance with political
fundamentalist ideology. Second, people are in few ways alike and in no way behave
as they need to behave for political fundamentalist ideology to be literally true. He
ended on a hopeful note and asked for a re-exarnination of “these maxims and
postulates and aphorisms which are believed to embody true principles of democratic
govemment.”'20 He thought it necessary to rest government on a rational basis. He
continued, “Our first task is to rationalize it in the minds of our own people.””' Thus
Munro’s call was exactly the opposite of Gallup’s 50-year effort to promote public
opinion polling, the wisdom of the common man, and the scientific advance polling
provided for democracy.

Munro ridiculed the eighteenth-century ideology that George Gallup would
exalt in the tremendous success of his promotion of public opinion polling. In

comparing the slogans of his political fundamentalist decalogue to the actual

 

"' Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism,” 454.
”9 Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism,” 454.
m Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism,” 459.

192

functioning of democratic government, Munro’s article lacked the grace and depth of
Lindsay Rogers’ critique of polling in 1949, but the essential argument was the same:
The actual operation of the government in the United States bore little relation to what
he called the fundamentalist decalogue. Less than a decade later, George Gallup
would come along and promote his polls in The Washington Post as allowing the
common man to speak. Gallup would claim to reveal the will of the majority through
what he called scientific opinion polls. Human equality for Gallup came in the form
of a deification of the claimed wisdom of the common man.

Munro’s article, especially in combination with Meier’s article, could be read
as directions for Gallup’s design to appeal to newspaper readers. Munro ridiculed the
idea of a ruling public opinion. He wrote, “We are asked to believe that public opinion
rules in the United States. It is the ultimate sovereign, the supreme law of the land?‘22
Munro discounted reason; rather it was the selling of ideas—or a campaign of
education. He assumed that common men could be easily led or educated. Gallup’s
message would celebrate the rule of public opinion and the wisdom of the common
man. At the same time, Gallup was seen as selling an idea. Gallup would be
described as comparing voters to consumers of toothpaste when a Time magazine
reporter wrote, “By 1932 Pollster Gallup was an up-&-coming expert at finding out
who read what kind of toothpaste ads and why. One day he said to himself: ‘If it

works for ”0311mm, Why not for politics’.”123

 

'2' Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism,” 459.
122 Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism,” 454.
'2’“Opinion: The Black and White Beans” Time 3 May 1948, 22-23.

193

Charles Angoff, “Hijher Learninggies to War”

 

in American Mercury in 1927

 

In an attack on 100 percent Americarrism before and during World War I,
Angoff named the university presidents and professors who fired people, or caused
people to be fired, because of their lack of enthusiasm for America’s participation in
WWI.”‘ He wrote, “And so it was throughout all the other great colleges and
universities of the country. The higher learning came to a standstill. Bacteriologists,
physicists and chemist vied with philosophers, philologians (sic) and botanists in
shouting maledictions upon the Hun and thousands took to snooping upon such of
their brethren as entertained the least doubt about the sanctity of the warm” Angoff
also described the efforts by professors to stir enthusiasm for the war. He wrote, “The
professors, in the meantime, were rushing off their writing tables one book after
another and one article after another, presenting before the still stolid American public
the devilish machinations of the German learned world and of the Potsdam rrrilitary
gang to strangle civilization, to trample pure womanhood in the gutter, and to
annihilate all the blessings which Christianity had bestowed upon mankind?“

He provided examples of pamphlets, Speeches, and books fi'om a wide range of
universities and disciplines. In the examples, nation was assumed as natural and the
members of the nation had certain traits because they were a certain nationality. In a

widely circulating pamphlet titled, “Germany versus Civilization,” William Roscoe

 

‘2‘ Charles Angoff, “Higher Learning Goes to War” American Mercury 11 (June 1927): 177-191.
”5 Angoff, “Higher Leanling Goes to War,” 178.
'2‘ Angoff, “Higher Learning Goes to War,” 180.

194

Thayer argued for the historical basis of the present-day German behavior. For
Thayer, the twentieth-centlu'y German was a modern day Hun. The German behaved
the way he did because his ancestors had traits such as dissoluteness, barbarity,

'27 All of Civilization was set against

excessive drinking, and lying, to name just a few.
the savage, and Germany was the savage, according to Angoff. In some examples,
nation was equated with race. The concept of civilization implied a continuum of
people from savage to civilized. Throughout the nineteenth century, the difference
between savage and civilized had been racialized: consider for example, the way in
which civilized settlers and the savage Indian were portrayed in popular literature.‘28
Civilization was tied to progress as a few select Anglo Saxon people became ever
more civilized as time passed.
Frederick Bausman, “Under Which Flag:
in American Mercury in 1927

Frederick Bausman argued that the British were controlling public opinion in
the United States to their advantage and to the disadvantage of the United States and
its citizens.”’ He wrote, “It is a sorry day for a country when the control of its public
opinion falls into the hands of foreigners.”'30 He criticized the people who revered the

British and who sought the approval of the members of the British aristocracy. “The

trouble is that we have among us an appalling number of our own citizens who, aside

 

'27 Angoff, “Higher Learning Goes to War,” 179.
. '2’ Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization
(New York: HarperPerennial, 1994).
'29 Frederick Bausman, “Under Which Flag?” American Mercury 12 (1927): 195-203.
"° Bausman, “Under Which Flag?” 195.

195

from any pecuniary interest they may have, regard it as a sort of impiety to criticise
(sic) these very successful islanders, and who do not realize that the overwhelming
mass of the British people thoroughly dislike Americans.”"' Bausman argued that
Britain was still the most powerful nation in the world. He was opposed to the policy
of forgiving the British war debt to the United States. He made a distinction between
the English and the Scots, and he used race and nation interchangeably. He wrote,
“Since the days of Rome no nation has ever had a more deep-seated contempt for all
other races than the English have today, singularly differing in this respect from the
Scotch.”132 He assumed the power of public opinion, and he assumed public opinion
could be controlled. He continued, “There are two ways in which you can conquer a
country, one by armed force, the other by controlling its public opinion, and he must
be blind indeed who does not see that in an infinite number of ways the English are
doing the latter to America.”'33
Bausman saw the few in control of public opinion and therefore in control of
policy. He wrote, “Meanwhile the British possess in this country a large Share of our
most influential press, our leading bankers, in seaport towns our leading lawyers, and
in fashionable circles the bulk of those persons who most influence public opinion and
abash opposition.”'3‘ Propaganda was used to meanan intentional influence of public

opinion and Bausman closed his article in American Mercury by reminding his readers

of the British propaganda effort during World War 1. He wrote,

 

'3' Bausman, “Under Which Flag?” 195-196.
”2 Bausman, “Under Which Flag?” 199.
'3’ Bausman, “Under Which Flag?” 199.

196

In conclusion, let us remember the charming description given by Sir Gilbert
Parker of the manner in which the British executed their propaganda to draw us
into the war—how every class among us, journalist, pedagogue, librarian,
legislator, banker, clergyman, and petty capitalist, was catalogued, ticketed, put
on a mailing list and deluged with literature conceived in England. It was a
stupendous and successful propaganda, and every observing person can see
that it is now being repeated with the great advantage of its being done in large
part by American agents.135

The criticism of the British, who had been referred to as cousins to Americans,
was unusual. The British relation as cousins to Americans had been race-based. Race
and nation maintained overlapping references, and there was an assumption that public
opinion could be controlled by a few. Thus, the common man would not be wise if he
were being controlled.
Harold Lasswell, “The Theog of Political Propaganda”
in The American Political Science Review in 1927

Harold Lasswell provided an alternative way to view propaganda in a short
article in The American Political Science Review in 1927. In a beautifully written and
closely argued discussion, he drew definitional boundaries around propaganda and

136

explained the concept He wrote, “Propaganda is the management of collective

attitudes by the manipulation of Significant symbols. The word attitude is taken to

 

'3‘ Bausman, “Under Which Flag?” 202.
"5 Bausman, “Under Which Flag?” 203.

197

mean a tendency to act according to certain patterns of valuation.”137 He continued,
“The idea of a ‘collective attitude’ is not that of a super-organic extra-natural entity.
Collective phenomena have too ofien been treated as if they were on a plane apart
from individual action. Confirsion has arisen principally because students have been
slow to invent a word able to bear the connotation of uniformity without implying a
biological or metaphysical unity?I38 For Lasswell, collective attitudes could be
altered, and propaganda was used to create or change the valuation of a disposition or
attitude.

The students in Childs’ public opinion class at Princeton would have read
starkly differing views of propaganda. For example, the popular press was said to
present propaganda as lies, whereas, the academic journal was said to present a road
map on how to accomplish the desired ends using propaganda. The concern was with
both discovering and implementing propaganda. Control might be good—or it could
be a threat.

William Bennett Munro, “Modern Science and Politics”

 

in Yale Review in 1927

 

In an article in Yale Review, William Bennett Munro called for the application
of science to politics to discover the laws of politics. He used analogies of weather
and disease to make his point. He also described the known laws of determination in

politics, those of geographic and racial determinism together with a tendency toward

 

'3‘ Harold Lasswell, “The Theory of Political Propaganda,” The American Political Science Review
21 (1927): 627-631.
”7 Lasswell, “Theory of Political Propaganda,” 627.

198

government by the few.139 Munro began with an attack on the idea that individuals
had influence in forming political policies. He wrote,
The sovereignty of the people is said to be the basis of democracy.
Everywhere, in our day, the people take it for granted that they are or ought to
be, masters of their own political destiny. This omnipotence is implied in the

current terminology of popular govemment—in such expressions as the rule of n.

.0-- _

public opinion, the consent of the governed, and the choice of the people. In a
word, the democratic dogma assumes that the form and the spirit of a
government are matters of human plan or prograrrrme (sic), subject to no forces
which are beyond the power of the electorate to control."°
Munro took issue with the then current assumption of the rule of public
opinion and the sovereignty of the people and wrote, “It does not square with the facts
of our political life, either past or present?"l Munro urged the application of science
to the study of politics and pointed out the move toward conservatism following the
war. He wrote, “Should men of scientific mentality rest satisfied with the explanation
that this extraordinary political phenomenon, so exactly synchronized over so much of
the earth’s surface despite great differences in geographical environment, in race, and

in political traditions—that this extraordinary phenomenon is merely the outcome of

unco-ordinated (Sic) and capricious volition on the part of the half dozen nations

 

'” Lasswell, “Theory of Political Propaganda,” 627-628.

"9 William Bennett Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” Yale Review 16 (1927): 723-738.
"° Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 723.

"' Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 723.

199

concerned?”“2 In his question, he revealed the categories that were considered
deterrniners of events: geography, race, and tradition. He continued, “Does it not
rather appear, on the face of things, that what we call the ‘will of the people’ in all
these countries has been subject to some world-wide constraining influence and that
popular sovereignty has become the obedient creature of time and circumstance?’""3
Munro argued that natural law could explain so much, that it seemed unlikely
there were no natural laws in politics. He wrote, “Are we to believe that there are no
controlling forces governing the course of public affairs in a world which is
everywhere else controlled by law? Shall we continue to say that man as a political
agent iS born free, and remains free, because we have not yet uncovered the laws of
politics which he consistently obeys? Science has been a discoverer of laws, and
political science ought to be.”"‘ Munro’s article in the Yale Review shows his belief
in science and the ability of science to explain and predict political phenomenon.
According to Munro, there were recognized laws of politics such as geographic
determinism and racial determinism. He placed racial determinism as almost as
important as geographic determinism. He wrote, “Racial determinism is of almost
equal importance. Some races have more political genius than others. It is, therefore,
possible for them to pursue a course of political evolution which would be quite
impracticable in the case of those less happily endowed. No race of men on earth

believes itself to be inferior in political genius to any other, yet the wide disparity is as

 

"2 Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 723-724.
"3 Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 724.
'“ Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 725.

200

self-evident as any social fact can be.”"’ He went on to explain how transplanted
political institutions often cannot survive, and the way in which a member of a race is
perceived to be different in a different environment. He continued, “The determinism
of racial heritage, at any rate, is a factor which all intelligent students of comparative
politics are accustomed to take into their reckonings?'“’

Munro used the difference between North America and South America to make
his point about racial determinism. He wrote, “It is racial determinism that explains,
in large measure, the higher and more stable plane upon which the political system of
the northern continent has moved. Systems of government depend, for their success or
failure, upon qualities and conditions which they do not create but only obey?"7 That
race influenced politics was common sense to Munro, and presumably to the readers
of Yale Review in the middle 19205.

In addition to the determining natural laws emerging from geography and race,
Munro pointed out the tendency toward autocracy. He wrote, “Another elementary
law of politics is the one to which Lord Bryce gave new emphasis a few years ago,
namely, the inevitable tendency of all government of autocracy. Every government,
whatsoever its form, and howsoever safeguarded, tends to become a government of the
Few.”"“ Munro insisted that in spite of efforts to expand government into the hands of
many, political power invariably drifts into the hands of a Single class: by birth,

wealth, military service or politics. He continued, “Nothing, indeed, is more

 

"’ Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 728.
"6 Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 728.
"7 Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 729.

201

impressive in all human history than the relative ease with which under any and every
form of government the classes have managed to strip from the masses the substance
of power while leaving them the outward forms of it. They take the cash and let the
credit go. It must inevitably turn out this way. The closer we get to a government by
the multitude the nearer we get to chaos.”"9 And further he wrote, “The principle of
political equality, when pressed to its logical conclusion, carries us straight to
anarchy?"O This was not a description of a wise common man, and science would
not lead to the support of what Munro called dogma.

‘5' He pointed out that majority

Munro insisted voters only vote against.
sentiment does not rule. He wrote, “Two and two do not make four in politics.
Majority sentiment does not always rule. Elections are determined, not by the
opinions of the whole people, but by the preponderating sentiment of those who go to
the polls. And this is largely dependent upon the intensity of the [negative] feeling
that has been created among the electorate?"2

It is clear how commonplace were the references to the rule of public opinion,
the sovereignty of the people, and the consent of the governed (what he called,
democratic dogma) at the time. He was arguing against these commonplace

sentiments. To support his call for a search for other “laws,” he used geography and

race as two examples of something resembling natural laws in determining political

 

'“ Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 730.

"9 Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 730-31.
"° Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 731.

‘5' Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 733-734.
"2 Munro, “Modem Science and Politics,” 734.

202

events. The assumption of racial determinism must also have been commonsense at
the time. He also used what he called “facts” to dispute what he called the
“democratic dogma” of the rule of public opinion when he reported who actually went
to the polls.
William Orton, “News and Opinion”
in The American Journal of Sociology in 1927
In the course of discussing the difficulty of reporting facts, William Orton
concluded that the determination of policy by public opinion—if public opinion meant
mass opinion—was highly undesirable. He thought mass opinion was dangerous."3
He saw the development of special publics as hopeful, however, and he wrote,
But when all is said and done, there is little reason to believe that a more
complete determination of capital issues, especially international issues, by
public opinion will ever be desirable—so long as by public opinion we mean
mass opinion. There are, in fact, few if any matters on which mass opinion can
act other than dangerously. There is need of a new conception, not only of
public opinion, but of democracy itself, which Shall rescue society from the
sterile alternatives of the warfare of group interests on the one hand and the
banalities of mass action on the other?"
Orton saw promise in the development of special publics as a professional public of

eminent persons, suggested by Lippmann.

 

"3 William Orton, “News and Opinion,” The American Journal of Sociology 38 (1927): 80-93.
"‘ Orton, “News and Opinion,” 93.

203

Orton exhibited an overtly elite view as he discussed his concern about the
massification of newspapers. He called the rotary press “revolutionary.”"’ In
addition, he made reference to the older tradition of those elite few who were the main
readers of newspapers in the past. He wrote, “Most old journalists, and many other
people, look back somewhat regretfully on the days when newspapers catered
primarily to a restricted, and almost entirely male, clientele, that took them, as they
took it, with a certain high seriousness totally absent from the Situation of today.”""

Orton blamed the rotary press for transforming political relationships. He
wrote, “The physical possibilities of circulation have altered the relations of
proprietors to editors, of management to labor, of editorial and business departments,
of newspapers to politicians, and of the whole concern to the public?"7 According to
Orton, the older traditions were overwhelmed by the push by newspapers for
circulation and of the “interests”'” for publicity. He argued that because the paper
catered to mass readership, it could no longer perform its previous service of
informing the serious elite few. Orton’s argument was not with whether or not some
type of newspaper might continue to serve an elite few. Rather, he was concerned

about whether the newspaper could inform public opinion. He wrote, “And that

larger problem challenges both the general validity of democratic axioms and the

 

'5’ Orton, “News and Opinion,” 80.
"6 Orton, “News and Opinion,” 93.
"7 Orton, “News and Opinion,” 81.
'” Orton, “News and Opinion,” 81.

204

particular assumption that public opinion is safely or satisfactorily informed by news
in a newspaper?"9

Orton saw public opinion as being in need of leadership by an elite few. This
was the same call that had been made for at least the prior 40 years. The common man
was not wise, according to Orton, and the newspaper was unable to provide leadership
because of the influence of advertising.
Donald Young, “Some effects of a course in American race problems on the race
prejudice of 450 undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania”
in Journal of A bnormal and Social Psychology in 1927

Donald Young’s article provided a marker for the thinking about race and
nation in 1927. He explained that there might be differences between the races, but
not all of the facts were in. More importantly, Young defined races as being red,
yellow, white, and black. From his point of view, it was foolish to consider making
distinctions between the Chinese and Japanese or between English and Swedish. Race
was taking on the meaning of color and losing its nineteenth-century connection to
nationality and language."50

The article begins with examples of what Young put in quotes as
‘broadmindedness.’ These were examples of the behavior of people who were trained

in the social sciences to judge human individuals on their merit. Young explained that

one instructor boasted of having lunch in public with a negro (sic), and another said he

 

"9 Orton, “News and Opinion,” 81.

205

 

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(1927): 23

gave his Jewish students the same opportunities as the ‘white’ men. Young wrote,
“Illustrations could be multiplied without end, where men trained in the social
sciences academically insist that human beings must be judged on their individual
merits and must not be brushed aside as inferior because their skin is dark or their hair
is kinky, but who in their personal relations with members of other races Show that
their academic preachings are no more than lip service to logic?'°'

Young studied a group of students before and after they took a class in race
relations. The class content provided facts about the differences between the races.
Before taking the course of study, students were asked to rank-order races, or to say
that there was no difference that could be rank ordered. After the class, students again
either said there was no difference between races or rank-ordered the races. The
students created the designations for the races. Young explained that at a high point,
14 percent of the students said races could not be rank-ordered in their abilities. At the
bottom of the students’ rank order in all cases were Mexican, Negro, Chinese, Turk
and Yellow, while at the top of the order were White, American, Nordic, English,
German, and French. For many students, Jew was ranked in the top ten.

Young carefully and strongly made a point of distinguishing nation as race
from skin color as race. After he acknowledged that there could be differences

between the races, he claimed that it was foolish to consider nationality labels as

racial difference. He wrote, “It is not to be denied that there may be important

 

'°° Donald Young, “Some effects of a course in American race problems on the race prejudice of
450 undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania, ” Journal of A bnormal and Social Psychology 22
(1927): 235-242.

206

inherent mental differences between, say the white, yellow, red and black races,
though the final evidence is still lacking. It is foolish, however, to attempt to
distinguish between Swede and Englishman, Chinese and Japanese.” He continued,
“Individuals of any nationality or color may be the equals of individuals of any other
nationality or color. Facts such as these were constantly illustrated and emphasized
throughout both terms, yet an analysis of the results of the tests Shows no firndamental
change in opinion on the part of those who attended the lectures and class discussion
and presumably studied the assignments.”162 Race and nationality were not
differentiated by the instructor because, Young wrote, it would have confused the
students.'63

Comparing this article to the social distance articles by Bogardus, two things
are apparent. First, there had been a shift in the definition of concepts in at least part
of academe. Second, there had been little change in the way undergraduates saw the
concept of race and nation. For the students, color was not the primary method of
rank-ordering people. They maintained the primacy of nation as a race when they
made the lists that appeared foolish to their professor.
Robert C. Binkley, “The Concefiof Public Opinion in the Social Sciences”
in Social Forces in 1928

Robert C. Binkley described multiple understandings of the concept of public

opinion, detailed the conflicts among scholars concerning the term in 1928, and

 

'6' Young, “American race problems,” 235.
"3 Young, “American race problems,” 240-241.
"3 Young, “American race problems,” 241.

207

 

 

 

concluded by declaring public opinion paradoxical with multiple meanings.”4 He
wrote, “Public opinion in connection with the problem of the will of the State is a
quantity of will; in connection with the problem of the social process it is a consensus;
in connection with the problem of history it is a summary?” He defined quantity of
will as an election model. A consensus, according to Binkley, was a consensus on
stereotypes.

A quantity of will, in Binkley’s argument, meant a majority in the model of an
election. He took nation and state for granted and projected elections backward in
time. His own quantitative and psychological training provided a strong influence on
his reasoning. He wrote,

Perhaps the oldest problem which involves the conception of public opinion is

that which Rousseau stated as the problem of the General Will. The terms of

this problem were set without much regard to the actual psychological facts of
human life. It was assumed there were Peoples or Nations made up of citizens
who made it a practice, each in his own freedom, to arrive at logical
conclusions with reference to matters of public concern. The question was
then propounded: how can the sum of the separate wills of the citizens be
commuted into a ‘general will,’ the Will of the Nation? Political theory took

over this problem and called it the problem of public opinion?“5

 

'“ Robert C. Binkley, “The Concept of Public Opinion in the Social Sciences,” Social Forces 6
(1928): 389-396.

"5 Binkley, “Concept of Public Opinion,” 396.

'“ Binkley, “Concept of Public Opinion,” 391. Binkley explains his theory is built on A. Lawrence
Lowell, Public Opinion and Popular Government, New York, 1913. Lowell was a proponent of

208

ole-d

Binkley continued and cited A. Lawrence Lowell, “Opinion in this context was
necessarily conceived as a determination of the will, ‘the acceptance of one among
two or more inconsistent views which are capable of being accepted by a rational mind
. . . . if only one view can be accepted, it is not an opinion but the result of a
demonstration’.”'67 According to Binkley there were two ways to explain a nation
having a will, and they corresponded to the two ways opinion could be shared. One he

called a “mystical notion of a super-individual mind of the Nation?”8 The second he

.a au-u‘.._l~1

called “the mathematical notion of a majority vote of the people.” The first of these
explanations, he said, was used in German state-worshiping theories, and the second
was used in democratic or Liberal theories. Binkley maintained that liberal thought
had an affinity for the mathematical conception of public opinion and found that it
exemplified in the machinery of election.'69 According to Binkley, all liberals
believed the results of a fair election were, in effect, the public opinion upon the issue
of the election. Therefore, Binkley wrote, the “practical machinery” of an election
funrished a pattern for a conception of public opinion.

Binkley pointed out there was a great deal of discussion about whether the
source of public opinion was predominantly emotion or intellect. He saw this division

as unbridgeable and based on foundational and contradictory presumptions.

 

measurement in social science and government. He also was a proponent of a few wise men ruling the
incompetent

'67Binkley, “Concept of Public Opinion,” 391. His reference is to A. Lawrence Lowell, Public
opinion in war and peace. Cambridge, 1923. 12-13.

"' Binkley, “Concept of Public Opinion,” 391.

"9 Binkley, “Concept of Public Opinion,” 391.

209

Binkley showed the complexity and conflict within the discussion of public
opinion by social scientists. There was no consensus on the meaning of public
opinion; rather, there were lively disagreements. Additionally, he linked democratic
or liberal thought to quantification of public opinion. According to Binkley, one
conflict was based, in part, on the democratic/liberal assumption of a reasoning citizen
with the assumption of an emotion-based member of the mass who did not reason, but
rather formed stereotypes. By placing a mystical super-individual mind of the nation
opposite a reasoning individual and then associating the mystical with German state
worship and reason with democratic or liberal theory, Binkley moves to link liberal
and mathematical, however, he does not explain further or provide a foundation for the
move.

There are important implications from Binkley’s meta-theoretical article. First,
there was a lively and ongoing discussion of the meaning of public opinion in 1928.
Second, there were several scholarly positions within the discussion of the meaning of
public opinion. Third, each of the competing definitions carried different assumptions,
and Binkley, who was working with some of his own presumptions, was able to
dissect the differing assumptions. Fourth, based on Binkley’s 1928 Social Forces
article, the link between democratic theory and an election equaling public opinion, or
in other words, equating public opinion with an idealized election, was already being
done. Different meanings of public opinion were circulating, but there was no
indication that quantification had bested the alternatives. The multiple definitions

were useful and provided differing understanding.

210

Binkley provided an example of what Benedict Anderson called the necessity
of forgetting in order to remember; the actual events of the past must be forgotten to
remember the new narrative.‘70 Binkley would have his reader forget (not
intentionally) the long time it took to change subjects into citizens; forget that reason
is an individual fl universal conception, whereas nation is bounded. His reasoning
citizens are already within a nation. He divided the holder of a stereotype from the
reasoning citizen. In Binkley’s view, the liberal conception of public opinion
expressed in a model election quantifies public opinion and requires the holder of
public opinion to be reasoning, while it is the non-rational citizen who acts based on

stereotypes.

Lowell Juillard Carr, “Public Opinion as a Dynamic Concept”

 

in Sociology and Social Research in 1928

 

Carr marked the First World War as a turning point in interest in the concept of
public opinion. He cited a list of the brightest lights in sociology and social
psychology, mostly from the 19208, to define public opinion as the content of men’s
minds and then argued for research on public opinion as a process of accommodation

'7' He wrote, “Renewed interest in public opinion since the war

to change in groups.
has brought out an ambiguity in the reference of the term that sociologists would do

well to clear up. Most writers mean by the term the content of men’s minds

considered collectively. Such usage ignores the phenomena of the psycho-social

 

m Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1995).
'7' Lowell Juilliard Carr, “Public Opinion as a Dynamic Concept,” Sociology and Social Research
13 (1928): 18-29.

211

process by which groups of people readjust to changes.”'72 Carr focused on the
disparity between the progress made by those who focused on individual opinion as
opposed to the lack of progress made by those who were trying to Study social
processes.

It is apparent fi'om Binkley and Carr that the concept of public opinion in the
late 19205 was contested, and the contest was of interest to academic journal editors.

Public opinion had been written about by a wide range of scholars. Although the idea

..’-——-u_-‘I_
.' 3

of measuring individual opinions and calling that public opinion was in wide
circulation, the idea was not dominant, and many were aware of the limitations of such
a definition. Furthermore, the aggregate sum of individual opinions could be thought
of both as an election model and as being different from an election. Additionally, the
scholars who had written about public opinion without a quantitative assumption or
theory were being cited by others as though they had thought of public opinion in a
model of an election.

Richard T. Lapiere, “Race Prejudice: France and England”

in Social Forces in 1928

 

Richard Lapiere referred to the experience of the American Negro soldiers in
France during the First World War as justification to study the difference between
racial attitudes in England and France. He was looking for evidence of the source of
racial prejudice and questioning the assumption of a biological cause of racial

prejudice. Lapiere discovered a difference and reported that it seemed unlikely that

 

m Carr, “Public Opinion as a Dynamic Concept,” 29.

212

race prejudice was natural or biologically based.I73 He wrote, “One fact stands out
from this present study which has a general application to the problem of racial
prejudice. Since the French people have no general antagonism to, or distaste for skin
color, that fact definitely precludes any concept of race prejudice as arising from or on
an inherent psychological valuation of white skin by the whites, and a ‘natural’
revulsion for dark or black skinned peoples.”'" The article reveals multiple
assumptions (current in the late 19205) about race as nation and race as skin color.
Lapiere began by explaining the delight of American Negro soldiers who were
treated as equals by the French, to the consternation of the American white soldiers.
He wrote, “They could eat in any café, Sit in any station, ride in any part of the train,
and talk to the same girls who talked to the white soldiers. They could do these things
just so long as their white brothers would let them. These white brothers were, of
course, thoroughly disgusted with the spectacle of Negroes associating with what
appeared to be decent French people, a situation which they could not justify or
comprehend.””’ The Negro soldiers, Lapiere reported, enjoyed the experience. He
continued, “They became intolerably arrogant and remarkably successful in the
competition for the good graces of the French, or so it seemed to the white troops.””"
Lapiere said the white soldiers came up with explanations for French treatment of the

Negro soldiers. The main explanation concurred with that given by American and

English travelers in Paris. He wrote, “Consequently their conclusion was that the

 

"3 Richard T. Lapiere, “Race Prejudice: France and England,” Social Forces 7 (1928): 102 — 1 l l.
"‘ Lapiere, “Race Prejudice,” 111.
'75 Lapiere, “Race Prejudice,” 102.

213

French must be inferior to Americans who, to their minds, correctly recognize the
Negro’s real character.”177 Lapiere then said that the explanation was shallow.

It was unclear why the white soldiers would be referred to as brothers. It does
not seem ironic from the context. Moreover, it appears from the text that it would
have been acceptable to the white soldiers for the Negro soldiers to socialize with
“indecent” French people, so the comment has a combined race and class load. The
description of the Negro soldier’s behavior as “intolerably arrogant” was from a white
perspective. Then Lapiere seemed to reverse himself when he described the
explanation of the French as inferior and Shallow. He moved on to urge the necessity
of discovering the source of the non-existence of racial prejudice in France. For him
to suggest looking for the reason something is not there implies that he had assummed
that race prejudice is normal. In other words, in Lapiere’s search for the reason of the
non-existence of racial prejudice, there was the assumption of the naturalness or
normalcy of racial prejudice.

Lapiere traveled in England and France in 1927, and in casual conversations he
surreptitiously, he said, asked about racial attitudes. He described the systematic
approach to his questioning. He categorized his answers by geographic location,
gender, and class. He showed a sophisticated knowledge of statistical sampling
because he described the shortcomings of his approach. In addition to asking

individuals how they felt about associating with Negroes or colored people, he also

 

'7‘ Lapiere, “Race Prejudice,” 102.
"7 Lapiere, “Race Prejudice,” 102.

214

asked hotel owners in both countries whether they permitted dark-skinned people as
guests.

He discovered a lack of racial antipathy among the French people, including
hotel owners. He discovered a great deal of racial antipathy among the English
people, including hotel owners.” He also discovered that the English had less contact
with non-white people than the French had. He found that the English did not
perceive a difference between Afiicans and Indians. He wrote,

The English have had even less direct contact with colored peoples than have

the French. The colored population is negligible and consists chiefly of East

Indians. Many of those are students in London most of whom are well

educated in the customs of the English, economically independent, and

evidence no cultural differences which, in themselves, would lead to
antagonisms.” He continued, “As far as attitude or prejudice is concerned, the

English seldom discriminate between the Afiican and the Indian natives.179

Although the race prejudice of the English caused some discomfort for the
Indian elite attending school in England, Lapiere reported that the problem was
different fiom the race problem in America. He wrote, “There is little of that open,
active, dislike which makes our own problem in America so difficult.””’° As he
explained the distinctions among nations and race antipathy, he also revealed a

suspicious attitude toward race labels that were not specifically derived from skin

 

‘" Lapiere, “Race Prejudice,” 108.
”9 Lapiere, “Race Prejudice,” 109.
"° Lapiere, “Race Prejudice,” 110.

215

color. He indicated his lack of confidence by using quotation marks around certain
terms. He wrote,
It has been suggested that the present lack of color antipathy in France is due to
the historical tendency of the ‘Latin Races’ to look upon Africans with less
racial antagonism than the ‘Nordic’ do. In other words, that the French
recognize, because of earlier historical contacts, a closer blood relationship
with these blacks than to the so-called Anglo-Saxons. It would not be denied
that the early contact of the French with North Africa has been greater, but it is
questionable whether such early contacts can in anyway account for present
~ attitudes and wholly deniable that those contacts have led the French to
consider themselves less white than do the English."n
For Lapiere, white skin color was a broader category than nation as race. He went on
to explain that the French did not place a lower valuation on white skin. He wrote that
it would be impossible to mistake a light-skinned person from India for a native
Frenchman. He then pointed out that the English and the French are physically
similar.
Lapiere’s reasoning tells him that the French should have more racial antipathy
than the English. He wrote, “The French should have, assuming race prejudice to arise
from inherent psychological dislike of difference and on a basis of direct contact, the

strongest anti-color feeling?”2

 

"' Lapiere, “Race Prejudice,” 110.
"2 Lapiere, “Race Prejudice,” 110.

216

Multiple currents of influence as to how people should be sorted are at play in
Lapiere’s article. Race as a skin color, race as a problem, and the cause of racial
antipathy are all important to Lapiere. He challenged the current assumption of a
biological cause for racial prejudice and failed to find a social cause to substitute. He

was able to Show the difference between the English and the French in the level of

racial antipathy. He also demonstrated an overlapping of terms. Lapiere used race and

skin color interchangeably. He referred to dark-skinned people and colored people. A
Negro and someone from India were both colored. He disparaged the older term of
Anglo-Saxon, however, and treated the terms Nordic and Latin with suspicion. This
article shows the new conception of race as Skin color.

James Reinhardt, “Students and Race Feeling”

 

in The Survey in 1928

 

James Reinhardt compared the views of university students in a West Virginia
school and a North Dakota school. He discovered stronger prejudice against Negroes
in North Dakota than in West Virginia, and he found other races or nationalities were
more disliked than the Negro by some students.”3

Reinhardt followed Bogardus and provided a list to students for rank ordering.
Bogardus called all of the entries on his list races. Reinhardt, however, used a
different categorization for his list. On the table in the article, the list was labeled

“Race or Nationality.” In the text Reinhardt wrote, “Fourteen different cultural and

 

"3 James M. Reinhardt, “Students and Race Feeling,” The Survey 61 (November 15, 1928): 239-
240.

217

. 1'."

racial groups were used: Russian, Jew, Italian, Scotch(sic), English, Irish, Chinese,
French, Japanese, German, Negro, Turk, Hindu and Scandinavian.”"‘
Reinhardt was surprised when his subjects found Russians to be less desirable
than Negroes. He wrote, “Strangely enough, exactly 50 percent of those comprising
group A indicated that the Negro was more desirable as a fellow citizen than the

Russian and while the Negro was given one third place and two fifth places among

fourteen races and nationalities, no student placed the Russian above fifth place and he

T...“

was given that position but once?”5 He continued, “It is noteworthy that as a citizen
and as a neighbor the Negro appears to be more desirable in the students of Group A
than any one of four other cultural and racial groups out of fourteen.”""
He also reported the reasons the students gave for their dislike of Negroes. He
wrote, “Nine of the students in the A group stated or implied low intelligence and
natural inferiority as the most undesirable characteristic of the Negro?”7 Other
students said they could not tolerate the Negro. Some said they feared race mixing.
He wrote, “Several of the students in both groups did not think that the Negro was
naturally inferior, but felt that the intennixture would result in an inferior race?'“
The terms race, nationality, and cultural group were use interchangeably by

Reinhardt. The article relies on Bogardus, however, the author expanded the terms

used to categorize people. Reinhardt showed his surprise that there could be more

 

"‘ Reinhardt, “Students and Race Feeling,” 239.
"5 Reinhardt, “Students and Race Feeling,” 239.
"6 Reinhardt, “Students and Race Feeling,” 240.
"7 Reinhardt, “Students and Race Feeling,” 240.
'“ Reinhardt, “Students and Race Feeling,” 240.

218

antipathy toward any group greater than the antipathy toward the Negro. This
indicates his assumption that the Negro would be the subject of the greatest antipathy.

L.L. Thurstone, “Attitudes Can Be Measured”

 

in The American Journal of Sociology 1928

In 1928, opinion, attitude, nationality, and race were contested concepts, and
L.L.Thurstone wrote beautiful cases for measurement methods. In, “Attitudes Can Be
Measured,” in The American Journal of Sociology, Thurstone defined attitude and
opinion. He defined opinion as the verbal expression of an attitude. An attitude was

described as more complex.”9

He wrote, “The concept ‘attitude’ will be used here to
denote the sum total of a man’s inclinations and feelings, prejudice or bias,
preconceived notions, ideas, fears, threats, and convictions about any specified topic.
Thus, a man’s attitude about pacifism means here all that he feels and thinks about
peace and war. It is admittedly a subjective and personal affair.”'°° That he needed to
make the distinction shows that neither term had acquired a fixed meaning. That
Thurstone used so many words to explain the distinction between the two terms and
that he constructed elaborate indices and scales to measure opinion provide more
evidence of the contested nature of both terms at the time.

In a second measurement methods article, “An Experimental Study of

Nationality Preferences,” in Journal of General Psychology, Thurstone proposed a

way to use a comparative method of measuring physical items to instead measure

 

"9 L.L. Thurstone, “Attitudes Can Be Measured,” The American Journal of Sociology 33 (1928):
529-554.
'°° Thurstone, “Attitudes Can Be Measured,” 531.

219

people’s preferences for people of specific nationalities'” He used nationality and
race interchangeably. The title of the article used nationality, and the first sub head
was: “An experimental study of racial attitudes.”I92 He asked students to make
preference choices between pairs of nation/race labels. On the list from which all
possible pairs were made were the following: American, Armenian, Chinaman (sic),
Englishman (sic), Frenchman (Sic), German, Greek, Hindu, Irishman (Sic), Italian,
Japanese, Jew, Mexican, Negro, Pole, Russian, Scotchman (sic), Spaniard, South
American, Swede, and Turk?”

Thurstone did not reference his list of nations and races, which was somewhat
different from Bogardus’. Thurstone made some of Bogardus’ non-masculine terms
masculine. These are the changes, with the terms used by Bogardus listed first, and
Thurstone’s second: English/Englishman, French/Frenchman, Irish/Irishman,
Scotch/Scotchman. Not included on Thurstone’s list, but appearing on the Bogardus
list, were Scotch-Irish, Canadian, Dutch, Welch, Norwegian and Filipino. Although
Thurstone’s list has Negro and Jew, he did not include the further distinction made by
Bogardus of Jew-German and Jew-Russian. Bogardus, in 1924, had consistently used

race to describe groups of people. His list primarily included country names, but it

 

'9' L.L. Thurstone, “An Experimental Study of Nationality Preferences, " Journal of General
Psychology 1 (1928): 405-423.

'92 Thurstone, “Nationality Preference,” 406.

‘93 Thurstone, “Nationality Preference,” 408. Emory S. Bogardus, “Measuring Social Distance,”
Journal of Applied Sociology 9 (March-April 1924/1925): 299-308.

220

”MEI

also included the name of a religion and and the term Negro as well?” Additionally,
Bogardus listed the term Mulatto among his choices involving social distance.I95 .
Thurstone made a connection between nation and opinion. He assumed that
opinion is based in nationality, and that psychological normalcy derives from
homogeneous nationality and/or race. He wrote,
To transfer the application of the law from lifted weights to nationality
preferences introduces new factors into the judgements. The nationality
preferences are saturated with prejudice and bias, with religious affiliations,
and with wide differences in knowledge and familiarity. In addition to these
variable factors, the group of 239 subjects was also intentionally left as
heterogeneous as it was found to be among undergraduates at the University of
Chicago. It is clear that with large portions of Jews, Catholics, Negroes,
Protestants, and students whose parents are foreign-born, it may be very
questionable whether the distribution of attitude toward any one of the twenty
nationalities is in any sense normal on the psychological continuum?"5
Normal, then, was defined within a nationality or race.
He anticipated, but did not find, difficulty in measuring his University of
Chicago students because they were heterogeneous. His method worked in Spite of
what he thought of as the extreme heterogeneity of his subjects. He reported: “The

group of 239 subjects was intentionally heterogeneous in that 40 percent or more of

 

'9‘ Bogardus, “Measuring Social Distance,” 299.
"5 Emory Bogardus, “Analyzing Changes in Public Opinion,” Journal of Applied Sociology 9
(l924-1925):373-381.

221

the parents and grandparents were foreign-bom, 15 percent were Jews, 64 percent
were Protestants, and 10 percent were Catholics.”197 That the heterogeneity was
represented by nationalities of same Skin color is apparent from the chart he provided
of the natal countries of the foreign-bom. The principal ancestral countries of
Thurstone’s 249 subjects were Canada, England, Germany, Ireland, and Russia.
Among those countries, or what Thurstone thought of as nationalities, only Russia
exceeded 10 percent among parents of subjects, and only Russia and Germany
exceeded 10 percent among grandparents.

For Thurstone, nationalities were gendered, race and nationality were
interchangeable, and the range of nationalities described had diminished from earlier
uses. Distinctions among Jews by national origin no longer were made, and the
colonial euphemism Scotch-Irish had been dropped, as had Mulatto. The confounding
of race and nation are visible in the work of one of the major innovators and
proponents of quantification in social science.

Edward S. Corwin, “The Democratic Dogma and the Future of Political Science”

in The American Political Science Review in 1929

Edward Corwin argued that academically trained political scientists Should fill the role
of expert leaders of public opinion. He believed an educated few should use their
scientific skills to advocate the greater good. He wanted political science to maintain
its role as crusader and he was certain that all men were not rational and were not

particularly interested in public affairs. The remedy he suggested would have political

'96 Thurstone, “Nationality Preferences,” 406.

222

scientists create symbols to counter the symbols created by the politicians, interests,

and advertisers.‘98

The common man was not wise. The common man needed experts
to be advocates for the common good.

Corwin was worried by the ability of politicians and advertisers to control the
great mass of people, but he was not without hope. He found hope in the potential of

political scientists to be crusaders. Although he believed the eighteenth-century ideal

of a rational man in the mass must be abandoned, he criticized the behaviorist

.10; -1 _.._h I‘m1
l

approach to political science, not because of the method, but because of the attention
spent on irrelevancies. Behaviorist political scientists, according to Corwin, had
missed the critical issue of the necessity of the civic-minded few taking charge. The
civic-minded few needed to step up and lead the masses who had come to be perceived
as irrational as a result of Darwin’s discrediting of rationality, behaviorism, and the
social changes in the world Since World War I. He wrote, “What, let it be asked
therefore, is the outstanding lesson of political behaviorism—a lesson supplemented
by that of war propaganda, of modern advertising methods, or the thing called vogue,
and in a dozen other ways? Is it not the lesson of the indefinite educability, and even
re-educability, of the masses?”'99 Corwin wanted the best to do the best they could
despite the reality of how men behaved. He wanted the few good men, political
scientists, to take charge, to crusade, and to advance democracy. He continued, “IS it

not the lesson that if those who are best qualified by good will, lack of bias, trained

 

"7 Thurstone, “Nationality Preferences,” 422.
'9' Edward S. Corwin, “The Democratic Dogma and the Future of Political Science,” The American
Political Science Review 23 (l929):569-592.

223

 

 

 

 

 

I!

minds, and precise methods to do this work as it Should be done, and for proper ends.
do not do it, others will—indeed are doing it at this moment—and for selfish ends? IS
it not, in short, that the real rulers of the race are those who educate it—who, in the
word of Mr. Lippmann, ‘create consent’?”2°°

Corwin wanted the political scientists to crusade for their own set of symbols.
He wanted political science to retain a goal of popular education. He thought a few
arbiters of social values should know and use scholarly method for the greater good,
just as so many were using it for selfish ends. Corwin wanted to know: “Why Should
the political scientist spend his time measuring stereotypes planted in the public mind
by other people when he could be planting some of his own?”201 Corwin wanted
political scientists to act in a way similar to the behavior of the experts Lippmann had
called for in Public Opinion. Corwin’s experts, however, would be extra-
govemmental. They would fulfill the role expected of all men in a democracy by the
eighteenth-century rationalists and democratic dogma. These few experts would
crusade using their own symbols to counter the symbols of propagandists, politicians,
and advertisers. Their symbols would be used to lead the members of the irrational
mass to the greatest good, the public good.

Oliver McKee, “Lobbying for Good or Evil”

in The North American Review in 1929

 

'99 Corwin, “Democratic Dogma,” 589.
2°° Corwin, “Democratic Dogma,” 589.
2‘" Corwin, “Democratic Dogma,” 590.

224

In an article in The North American Review, Oliver McKee argued that
lobbying is beneficial.202 He urged individuals to find the lobby that represents their
interests. He wrote,

The individual citizen, in himself, is virtually without representation on Capitol
Hill. Except in the imagination of the political philosopher, the ‘natural man’, as
such, does not exist. For each citizen is tied to a particular economic interest,
whether he be a farmer, a banker, a college professor, or an exporter of razors or
shaving cream. Lobbies give these economic groups a representation in the
Nation’s Capital, and thus help to broaden the bases of our democracy.203
Becoming part of a lobby, according to McKee, was the only possible way for an
individual to have any voice in national affairs. He said the citizen must then watch
his own lobbyist. He wrote, “Vigilance is the price of safety even here. He must watch
his lobbyist, just as a good citizen calls the mayor of his city from time to time for an
account of his stewardship. A careful watch of this kind will drive parasites from their
sofi retreats, and do much to prevent the abuses and evils which may characterize
lobbies today, as in the past?“

Frank R. Kent, “The Great Lobby Hunt”

in Scribner ’s in 1930

 

202 Oliver McKee, Jr. “Lobbying for Good or Evil,” The North American Review 227 (l929):343-
352.

2°3 McKee, “Lobbying for Good or Evil,” 352.

2‘” McKee, “Lobbying for Good or Evil,” 352.

225

Writing in the mass circulation magazine Scribner ’s, F rank Kent discriminated
between good and bad lobbyists and argued that times had changed. He said, that
although lobbyists once were terrible, now they did good work?” He wrote,

Finally, I think the committee has performed a considerable service in

concentrating attention upon the extraordinary development of lobbying in this

generation, the vast difference between the lobby of the past and the lobby of
the present and the amazing degree to which lobbyist activities have come to
dictate legislative action in the country—not in a sinister sense but recognized
as entirely legitimate and participated in by millions of people. Though
entirely unofficial they have become a more powerful force in the government
than the legislative branch itself?“

Kent drew a distinction between past lobbyists who bribed members of Congress, and

the lobbyists of 1930 who used propaganda. He wrote,

The direct purchase is a thing of the past. The change in the methods of the

lobbyist has kept pace with the times. AS Ex-Senator Thomas of Colorado not

long ago declared, ‘ The men who seek special favors in Congress today do not
bribe. They rely almost exclusively upon the manipulation of public
sentiment.’ In brief, the prime weapon of the old-time lobbyist was money; the

prime weapon of the modem lobbyist is propaganda.207

 

2“ Frank R. Kent, “The Great Lobby Hunt,” Scribner ’s 87 (1930): 500-506.
2°“ Kent, “Lobby Hunt,” 503.
”7 Kent, “Lobby Hunt,” 504.

226

The use of propaganda, according to Kent, began during World War I and had
developed into a flood put out by publicity departments and press agents representing
all kinds of businesses and organizations. The purpose of the flood of propaganda was
to create public opinion. He wrote, “All of this is designed to manufacture and
manipulate public sentiment. That has become the great national pastime—and
millions play at it?“ He detailed the activities of a few of the most powerful
organizations, such as the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Anti-Saloon League,
and the Association Against Prohibition. According to Kent, their activities included
more than propaganda. Big organizations also supported candidates in election
campaigns and mobilized voters to pressure Congress, he wrote. Kent believed that
the new-style, good lobbyist researched and wrote legislation.

In Kent’s view, the. propaganda efforts of the big organizations were good
because they represented the interests of many people. Kent and many of his readers
could have seen this control as useful; especially if others were being controlled.
George A. LundbergfiPublic Opinion from a Behavioristic Viewpoint”
in The American Journal of Sociology in 1930 '

The complexity and long duration of the debate over the meaning of public
opinion and the growing authority of statistical analysis were apparent in George
Lundberg’s argument that behaviorism’s methods should be applied to sociology. He
argued that sociology should follow psychology and, in so doing, find a way out of

what he called a lack of shared definitions of terms and apply a more rigorous

 

2“ Kent, “Lobby Hunt,” 505.

227

scientific method. The article showed the lack of agreement on the meaning of the
term public opinion and the way in which behavioristic definitions masked the
historical political context of the term?”

Lundberg’s 1930 article in The American Journal of Sociology reveals that the
definition of public opinion was contested for a long time and that agreement on a
definition was not even close in 1930. It is also clear that the idea of measuring
individual opinions had been around for some time. He wrote, “The controversy
between the adherents of these two positions has been long and learned, with as yet, no
conclusive result?”lo His citations in connection with a definition of public opinion as
an aggregate sum of individual opinions included James Bryce from a 1910 edition of
The American Commonwealth, Floyd H. Allport from his book Social Psychology in
1924, and Charles H. Cooley refuting the definition of public opinion as an aggregate
sum of individual opinions in 1916 in Social Organization. Lundberg found the sum
of opinions difficult because he assumed that a summation was not possible. He
wrote, “The first class of definitions is difficult to understand or to use because they
raise the question as to what a ‘collection’ or ‘aggregate’ of individual opinions could
be. The words imply algebraic summation, but in a practical or mathematical sense
such summation is not possible?“

Lundberg detailed the major points of controversy over the term public

opinion. The controversy included the following questions: Was public opinion only

 

2” George A. Lundberg, “Public Opinion from a Behavioristic Viewpoint,” The American Journal of
Sociology 36 (1930): 387 — 405.
2‘° Lundberg, “Public Opinion from a Behavioristic Viewpoint,” 389.

228

unanimous or was it synonymous with majority opinion?; if a minority was also public
opinion, just how small a minority could it be?; why was there so much vagueness in
the definition of public?; were there rapid changes in public opinion?; and is the group
opinion superior to the opinion of individuals in the group? Before addressing those
issues, Lundberg described the range of meanings in the discussion of public opinion.
What Lundberg called the current uses of the term public opinion were, 1) the opinions
in which all agree, 2) the opinion in which the majority agree, 3) the sum of all
opinions—the whole mass of human thought on a subject, 4) the views of the organs
of opinion—the press, electoral results, etc., 5) the opinion of the educated or those in
authority, and 6) the collective judgement of a group regarded as an entity."2
Although some of the major scholars of public opinion—Bryce, Lowell,
Shepard—were quoted in the article, Lundberg ignored or misunderstood these
scholars’ foundational assumptions. For Lundberg, nation and state became
geographic variables and ways to sort people into groups. No link remained between
public opinion and nation, public opinion and democracy, or public opinion and any
possible link to governance. For example, Shepard’s argument, as well as Bryce’s,
was linked to the relationship of public opinion to governing. In 1910, Shepard wrote

about the alternatives of the conception of public opinion, the debate over the

newspaper (journalism) as a molder or reflector of public opinion, and the variety of

 

2” Lundberg, “Public Opinion from a Behavioristic Viewpoint,” 389.

2” James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (new rev. ed., 1910) 251; Lowell Juilliard Carr,
“Public Opinion as a Dynamic Concept” Sociology and Social Research 13 (1928): 18-19; Walter J.
Shepard, “Public Opinion,” The American Journal of Sociology 15 (1909-10): 32-60 (especially pages
444) as cited by Lundberg, “Public Opinion from a Behavioristic Viewpoint,” 388 footnote 1.

229

If A. all .- ”If—”1

ways public opinion could be formed. He followed Henry Jephson in tracing the
historical development of alternative organs (vehicles of expression) of public opinion
in England. The organs, grouped as the Platform, include all ways by which publics
try to gain adherents and pressure government. They include: public speaking, public
assemblies, passing resolutions, petitions, delegations sent to government authorities,
political organizations and demonstrations. Shepard linked these alternative organs to
the press, saying that their power was increased when their activity was reported.
Moreover, Shepard was hopeful that public opinion could actually rule. He wrote,
“Political prophecy is hazardous, but if the trend of government evolution which the
last decade has disclosed in both the Anglo-Saxon countries continues, may we not
confidently expect the actual realization of government by public opinion without the
interposition of representative bodies other than very extended electorates?”3 Race
and nation were tightly linked for Shepard, and public opinion was a force that ruled
government.

Lundberg’s behavioristic lens blinded him to the authors’ time- and context-
based meaning. Whatever the reason, Lundberg seems to have missed or ignored the
ties of public opinion to governing. It is clear the debate over the meaning of public
opinion, and the concept of an aggregate wiser than the individuals (along with the
idea of measuring public opinion) continued to be disputed by academics from a range

of disciplines in 1930.

 

2" Walter J. Shepard, “Public Opinion,” The American Journal of Sociology 15 (1909-10): 60.

230

Charles E. Merriam, “Research Problems in the Field of Parties, Elections, and

 

Leadership”

 

in The American Political Science Review in 1930

In a prescription for future research in The American Political Science Review, Charles
Merriam listed types of research he believed must be done to understand political
parties and elections. Merriam wanted more science applied to the study of politics.214
Merriam hoped to see social scientists improve on the practice of predicting elections.
In other words, he wanted to see the social sciences’ measuring methods advance
joumalism’s gathering of straw votes. Merriam wrote,

One of the tests of science is the ability to predict. Political scientists have left the
prediction of election results to newspaper men and journalists who have usually no
special training in statistics and in the accurate handling of data. The success of the
rough and ready methods of the journalists in the field should be encouraging to the
political scientists. A definite attempt should be made to systematize the procedure for
the taking of straw votes. As a preliminary to this work, all the known methods of
sampling should be applied to a great variety of existing election returns. Different
techniques should be tried out at a number of different elections."5

Additionally, Merriam suggested studying campaigning efforts. He wrote, “Among
the campaign devices that could be studied are the house to house canvass, the printed

circular sent through the mails, the radio address, and the public meeting. Changes in

 

2" Charles E. Merriam, “Research Problems in the Field of Parties, Elections, and Leadership,” The
American Political Science Review 24 (1930): 36-38.
2“ Merriam, “Research Problems,” 34.

231

 

mundanw

.‘4.’ '

attitude could be recorded by the use of scales similar to those devised by Thurstone,
Allport, and others.”“’ He thought literacy tests, residential requirements, and systems
for selecting electors also might be studied. He was interested in discovering in what
ways systems disfranchised some citizens. He urged scholars to study convention
nominations and the direct primary."7

Merriam suggested a wide range of ideas on how votes might be analyzed, and
he thought race, and nationalities were critical ways votes should be analyzed. He
thought it would be possible to compare votes by political parties in urban and rural
areas. However, other variables were more elusive. He wrote, “The analysis of the
importance of sex, religion, race, nationality, occupation, and similar factors in the
determination of party affiliations would be harder to make, but there is much to do in
this field.”218 He continued with suggestions for ways to overcome the difficulties in
the projects. He wrote, “Precinct returns could be used in the large cities for the
analysis of the importance of nationality.” He continued, “Another important problem
would be the analysis of the negro (sic) vote. In the border states between the North
and South, the negro (sic) vote is of great importance to the two major parties, and the
negro (sic) vote is also of growing significance in the Northern cities.”2'9
Merriam’s concern was with improving on measurement and prediction. Although he

included race and nation in his discussion, he did not define his terms, and the

references in the text do not reveal meaning. In addition to what appears to be a direct

 

2" Merriam, “Research Problems,” 34.
2” Merriam, “Research Problems,” 35.
2" Merriam, “Research Problems,” 36.

232

description of what George Gallup would later claim and do—bring science to straw
polls and use academic sampling methods to predict elections—the article is
remarkable for its wide range of suggestions, and from those many suggestions comes
the vividness of the unforrned quality of the quantitative study of politics.

George B. VetterJ‘The Measurement of Social and Political Attitudes and the Related

Personality Factors”

 

in Journal of A bnormal and Social Psychology in 1930

Multiple understandings of race and nation were visible in George Vetter’s
1930 article. In trying to link personality to political attitudes, he revealed a rich range
of overlapping meanings of race and nation. Additionally, Vetter’s article provides a
look at the social issues of' the late 19203. Vetter looked at several years of journals of
political and social opinion to find social issues of the day. He did not specify which
ones or for precisely how long. In addition to finding the issues, he also looked for
positions on the issues. He found fifty questions upon which there were varying
opinions. Vetter reduced those fifty to thirty-six, and he scaled the opinions on each in
five steps.”°

The thirty-six issues in the order in which they appeared on his questionnaire
were: Government ownership, the confiscation of wealth, protective tariff, hereditary
wealth, the subway fare, social limitations in mating, question of birth control, legality

of abortions, question of divorce, attitude toward incest, attitude toward attempts at

 

2" Merriam, “Research Problems,” 36.
22° George B. Vetter, “The Measurement of Social and Political Attitudes and the Related Personality
Factors, ” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 25 (1930): 149-181. -

233

social progress, the prohibition question, academic freedom, freedom of speech,
conscription for military service, gambling, socialization of medical care, minimum
wage laws, equality of income and taxation, compulsory education, powers of the
supreme court, religion and science, the American constitution, respect for tradition,
the church, the powers of labor organizations, Hoover’s qualifications, recognition of
Russia, naval armament, the Fascist government, miscegnation (sic)—interbreeding of
races, our Latin-American policy, immigration, international alliances, white

221

supremacy, and the Nordic race. The questions about miscegenation, immigration,

white supremacy, and the Nordic race are each particularly applicable to the
investigation of public opinion and nation.

Race and nation appear to be both the same and different in the following
immigration statements. “1. We had better preserve our lands and heritage for our

own offspring by shutting out all immigrants.”222 It is impossible to tell from the

”223 ”224

statement alone to which “we and “our refer. However it is labeled as the

”225

“reactionary” response, and based on the subsequent questions, it seems “we and

“0111'”226

was a reference to white American Protestants.
2. Immigrants should be strictly limited to small numbers of the white race and
of cultures similar to our own, and then only those of a certain high standard of

culture or intelligence. 3. Immigration should be limited to small and definite

 

22‘ Vetter, “Measurement of Social and Political Attitudes” 153-162.
222 Vetter, “Measurement of Social and Political Attitudes” I62.
223 Vetter, “Measurement of Social and Political Attitudes” 162.
’2‘ Vetter, “Measurement of Social and Political Attitudes” 162.
’25 Vetter, “Measurement of Social and Political Attitudes” 162.
2" Vetter, “Measurement of Social and Political Attitudes” 162.

234

racial or national quotas based on the number of that group already here and
thoroughly assimilated. The individuals admitted should be of a fair standard
of physical and mental excellence.227
Answers two and three are labeled the conservative answer by Vetter and his panel of
academics. Race as white comprise several cultures, unless the reference would have

been understood to apply only to peOple of British decent. Statement three makes a

.1

distinction between race and nation. Statement four and five are labeled liberal, and in

'3’

T“.
I

statement five the reference is only to race. In the social issue of immigration in 1930,
race and nation were important categories by which to sort people. Some group was
understood by statement makers and rankers to mean “us,” and others were to be
excluded by race or nation.
The statements to be selected by college students under the classification
“White Supremacy” carry a rich cultural load. The statements were:
1. The white race should continue its past and present program of subjugating
and exploiting the darker or inferior races of the earth. 2. Modern civilization
is almost entirely a product of the white race. With this evidence of
superiority, we are justified in doing our best to maintain the white race in its
position of unquestioned supremacy. 3. All the races are of very nearly equal
worth, each making its own peculiar contribution to civilization. No race
should assume itself to be the elect. 4. The white race today is merely a dog

having its day, as history shows other races to have had. It might well be some

 

”7 Vetter, “Measurement of Social and Political Attitudes” 162.

235

other race’s turn next. Certainly the white race has done nothing on which to

base clams of permanent leadership. 5. The ruthlessness and barbarism the

white race has persistently shown in its relations with other races justifies the

other races in combing to exterminate the common enemy the whites or beat

them into submissionm
Nineteenth-century racialist assumptions are present in the statements; including the
inferiority of darker races. Yet, race mutated to white sometime during the 19205, at
least from Vetter’s point of view or in the press treatment from which the issues had
been culled. White had become a racial category, and the author apparently believed it
would be understood by his reader, who most likely would have been included in the
category of white. The nineteenth-century racialist theorists would not have found the
overlay of white congruent with their theories. They made much finer distinctions
among groups and used historical arguments for their evidence.

Apparently not all of the members of what was then called the white race were
equal under one category as evidenced by the next set of statements under the heading,
“The Nordic Race.” They were:

1. The Nordics have never been more than rather successful and acquisitive

pirates, plunderers, and traders. 2. The Nordics have contributed relatively

less to progress and civilization than some other types of races. 3. The
peoples loosely referred to as the Nordics have been neither more nor less

inventive or progressive than other races. 4. The Nordic race has contributed a

 

2” Vetter, “Measurement of Social and Political Attitudes” I62.

236

relatively large share to progress and civilization. 5. The Nordic race has been

the source of all fundamental progress and civilization?”

In both sets of statements about social issues, there is an assumption of
civilization and progress. Both terms, civilization and progress, had been theoretically
linked to race by nineteenth-century writers. For example, progress was the
advancement of civilization, and civilization was the advancement of the

British/American culture because it was believed by academics and other elites to be

WW1

the most advanced form of civilization.

D. D. Drobg “Methods Used for Measuring Public Opinion”

in The American Journal of Sociology in 1931

D. D. Droba used method of construction as his category of classifying investigations
of public opinions. In the introduction to his literature review, he pointed out that

23° He wrote,

there was a lack of agreement on the definition of opinion and attitude.
“The methods chosen for review will somewhat depend on the definition of opinion or
attitude. Unfortunately, however, there is wide disagreement as to what opinions and
attitudes are.”2" Moreover, he did not provide a discussion of the alternatives. He
continued: “However, in order to avoid too much misunderstanding, the writer will

limit himself to opinions on public issues or public opinion. Only methods used for

measuring opinions on such topics as prohibition, nationalities and races, war, politics,

 

22’ Vetter, “Measurement of Social and Political Attitudes” 162.

23° D.D. Droba, “Methods Used for Measuring Public Opinion,” The American Journal of Sociology
37 (1931): 410.423.

2" Droba, “Methods Used for Measuring Public Opinion,” 410.

237

will be considered in this paper.”232 Here then, he decided (without defending his
decision), that the concept of public opinion concerned public issues, choosing his
literature for review based on the topics. Therefore, in 1931, according to Droba, there
was no agreed-on definition of, or method for, studying public opinion. His logic
shows what he believed were public issues.

Harold D. Lasswell,“The Measurement of Public Opinion”

in The American Political Science Review in 1931

 

ran-.‘x-‘i 1

Harold Lasswell proposed taking stock of the status of the study of public

—'—

opinion and suggested some core concepts?33 Lasswell wrote, “Since the last decade
has witnessed an unparalleled outlay of energy in discussing public opinion, and in
inventing devices intended to add precision to the discussion, it is not untimely to take
stock of our present position in the matter?“ Lasswell gently rebuked those who had
suggested using measurement as a way to discover the definition of public opinion.
Lasswell thought a set of core concepts was necessary to bring more precision to the
study of public opinion.

He defined public opinion within a larger set of concepts. First, be defined
political movement as political change involving many people. Complex political
movement involved alternative, debatable points of view. He wrote, “We may say that
the complex political movement originated in unrest, passed through a phase of

symbolization and discussion, and proceeded through enactment to a relatively

 

232 Droba, “Methods Used for Measuring Public Opinion,” 410.
2” Harold D. Lasswell, “ The Measurement of Public Opinion,” The American Political Science
Review 25 (1931): 311-326.

238

permanent change in the political pattern.”235 He acknowledged that sometimes
change does not result and that instead, debate might break off as continuing
disagreement sometimes led to an exchange of bullets or some other type of coercion.
Then he used a reference to public opinion to, in turn, refer to the phase of a complex
political movement during debate. He wrote, “It [public opinion] is used to refer to
that phase of a complex political movement which is characterized by debatable
demands for action. It is essential for the concept of public opinion that one recognize
that differences are pertinent only when they involve antagonisms.”?” He continued,
“No less fundamental for the concept is the idea of demands whose fate is to be
subjected to discussion and to some deciding procedure short of coercion.”237
Lasswell suggested some possible ways of deciding what could be measured
within his limiting core concepts. His public was limited by time—days, weeks,
months, years—and participation in the debate needed to be defined by some minimal
amount of time. He wrote,
Since participation involves not only the total numbers who participate, but the
intensity of their participation, we must decide how to weigh so much voting against
so much expenditure of money and time. One possibility would be to translate time
spent into political earning power, and include voting, canvassing, speaking, attending

committee and mass meetings, and the like, in the time account?38

 

 

2" Lasswell, “Measurement of Public Opinion,” 311.
”5 Lasswell, “Measurement of Public Opinion,” 312.
23‘ Lasswell, “Measurement of Public Opinion,” 313.
2” Lasswell, “Measurement of Public Opinion,” 313.
1” Lasswell, “Measurement of Public Opinion,” 314.

239

Lasswell then placed his definition of the public within another set of concepts.
A public may arise out of an attention group, and an attention group was comprised of
those people who pay attention to the course of events related to some political issue,
he wrote. Then he connected public to a sentiment group, placing the public as a
subset to nationality. The public was within the sentiment group. He wrote,
There remains the task of designating the connection between the public and the
sentiment group, which is composed of those who are emotionally identified through a
collective symbol, like nationalists, patriots, proletarians, and partisans. Identification
involves the inclusion of a symbol of the other into the personality of an individual.
Identification can occur with respect to those who are spatially remote through the
perception of a common relation to an inclusive symbol, like a flag emblem, or a
name?39

According to Lasswell, the debate on an issue was constrained by a
consensus—participants had to agree to have a debate. He thought it necessary to
have those who disagreed on the political situation agree that the situation was
debatable. He wrote, “Public opinion proceeds within a framework of the non-
debatable.”240 He continued, “Demands are debatable so long as they do not
transgress the moral consensus; when they do, the public dissolves, debate ceases,
intolerance begins, and joint coercion is in readiness.”“' In other words, some issues

could be debated and other issues were beyond discussion.

 

2” Lasswell, “Measurement of Public Opinion,” 316.
1” Lasswell, “Measurement of Public Opinion,” 316.
2‘" Lasswell, “Measurement of Public Opinion,” 316.

240

:1

Afier drawing careful boundaries around the concept of public opinion,
Lasswell asked a series of questions about how to proceed with the study of public
opinion before he suggested again that precise definition must come before
measurement. For example, he asked: 1) How can the effect of public opinion upon
other political processes be appraised? 2) How can it be determined if public opinion
was present or absent in connection with policy changes? 3) If present, what were the
dimensions of public opinion? 4) How have group demands been modified because
they were debated publicly? 5) What is the extent to which policies are modified
because of consideration of how the public might react?242

Lasswell closed by explaining the necessity for precise definitions. He wrote,
“I have sought to indicate how certain general ways of thinking about public opinion
would place some measuring tentatives in perspective and show where effort has not
thus far been directed successfully. The goal is precise statements about the extent,
duration, intensity, effect, and formative factors in public opinion.”243 The idea of
measure first and then define was being refuted by Lasswell.

Roscoe C. Martim “The Municipal Electorate: A Case Study”
in The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly in 1933

Roscoe Martin used comparative summary statistics when he examined
election returns. Although he urged researchers to use more election returns, he noted
they were sometimes difficult to obtain. He gently urged the use of objective

quantitative methods. He assumed that the failure to exercise the franchise was a

 

242 Lasswell, “Measurement of Public Opinion,” 325

241

problem. In addition, he assumed that each “native White American” would behave
the same way at the polls and that other racial groups would distinguish themselves
from whites and each other?“ He wrote, “Of all the problems which arise from
consideration of the electorate, none commands more instant attention than that of
race, nor are many more deserving of study. Since democracy is looked upon by most
as an institution indigenous to American soil, it is assumed that native white
Americans the country over will react in about the same way, quantitatively at least, to
the stimuli of our democratic way of existence?“ He continued: “It is assumed
firrther that other racial groups will react to the same stimuli in ways which will
distinguish them from the native whites and from each other?” And then he
acknowledged the contested nature of his assumptions when he wrote, “While the
validity of these assumptions, and more particularly of the frrst, may of course be
questioned, for present purposes let us suppose them to be valid.”247

In 1933, the continuing assumption of racial differences that are expected to
appear in quantitative measures was clear. The use of quantitative measures was still
struggling.
Francis G.Wilson, “Concepts of Public Opinion”

in The American Political Science Review in 1933

 

 

2‘3 Lasswell, “Measurement of Public Opinion,” 326.

2“ Roscoe C. Martin, “The Municipal Electorate: A Case Study, ” The Southwestern Social Science
Quarterly 14(1933): 193-237.

2“ Martin, “Municipal Electorate,” 229.

2“ Martin, “Municipal Electorate,” 229.

2" Martin, “Municipal Electorate,” 229.

242

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a rich theoretical discussion, Francis Wilson explored the meanings of the
concept of public opinion. He wrote from a historical political background. The logic
of his discussion led him to the possibility that democracy may be only a momentary

2” He wrote,

fluctuation in political history.
Today the need of experts and technicians in finding a basis of action is
recognized. If we develop means of getting at what may be spoken of as
relative truth, opinion will be left as the ruler of a functionless kingdom. If
opinion may only support, and if it has no right to resist, the experts, the value
of democracy is clearly in question. If the technique of finding and acting on
facts is to be restricted to experts, popular government, except as a means of
obtaining obedience from the masses, may well be only one short phase in the
history of politics?49
Wilson stated clearly what was the conclusion of many social scientists in the
first decades of the twentieth century. Just as there was increasing participation
through the extension of the franchise, the chaos of industrial life that began before the
turn of the century followed by the shock of the World War and the backlash against
the war propaganda that focused so much attention on public opinion in the 19205
meant that there could be no other conclusion from a historical-political perspective

except that the time had come to release the presumption of a participatory

government. Democracy had had its day.

 

2“ Francis G. Wilson, “Concepts of Public Opinion,” The American Political Science Review 27
(1933): 371-392.
2" Wilson, “Concepts of Public Opinion,” 380.

243

 

That race is equivalent to nation continued to represent the thinking of most of

 

the authors numbered in the public opinion canon when either race or nation was
mentioned. For some, nation as race was of critical importance. For others, the issue
was one of many on a social issue agenda. It is impossible to frnd a wise common
man portrayed by the authors. Instead, the common man was at best educable by an
elite few and at worst dangerous and in need of control. And although many who
thought opinion was something an individual possessed, there was no agreement on

how to define public opinion when all of the articles comprising Childs’ syllabus are

’— ‘v c‘ “3mm gj

considered.

244

Chapter Six

Summary and Conclusions

The origins story of public opinion marked the advent of the modern study of
public opinion with the pollsters’ accurate prediction of Franklin Roosevelt’s
presidential victory in November 1936 and the founding of the prestigeous academic
journal Public Opinion Quarterly in January 1937. The highly successful meaning of
the concept of public opinion is what polls measure, according to Michael Schudson,
Susan Herbst and Phillip Converse.l Scholars argue that the middle 19303 mark the
beginning of the field of study of public opinion? William Albig wrote, “These two

”3

decades [1936-1956] span almost exactly the history of polling. Eleanor Singer

wrote in 1987, “And the field is really coterminous with the journal [Public Opinion
Quarterly].’”
George Gallup was widely credited with promoting the public opinion industry

and the current dominant definition of public opinion as being what polls measure.s

 

lMichael Schudson, The Good Citizen: A History of American civic life (New York: The Free Press,
1998): 228; Susan Herbst, Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) 12, 43, 63, 153; Phillip E. Converse “Changing
Conceptions of Public Opinion,” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (1987) 813.

’Charles K. Atkin and James Gaudino, “The Impact of Polling on the Mass Media,” Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 472 (1984): 1 19-128; Leo Bogart, Silent Politics:
Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion (New York: John Wiley, 1972), 14; Albert Gollin, “In
Search of a Usable Past,” Public Opinion Quarterly 49 (1985): 416; George Gallup “The Changing
Climate for Public Opinion Research,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 21 (1957): 23.

3William Albig, “Two Decades of Opinion Study,” Public Opinion Quarterly 21 (1957): 14.

‘Eleanor Singer, “Editor’s Introduction” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (1987): 82.

5Albert H. Cantril, “In Memoriam: George Horace Gallup, Sr. 1901-1984” Public Opinion Quarterly
48 (1984): 807-808; John E. Drewry, Post Biographies of Famous Journalists (Athens, Georgia: The
University of Georgia Press, 1942), viii; J. Michael Hogan, “George Gallup and the Rhetoric of
Scientific Democracy,” Communication Monographs 64 (1997): 161-179, 162; David W. Moore, The

245

 

 

The name George Gallup and The Gallup Poll are now nearly synonymous with the
public opinion poll in much of the world and have been for more than 50 years.’
Gallup’s promotion of the idea that public opinion is reflected by poll results began
with a syndicated weekly column of poll results in 1935.7 He not only took credit for
nearly single-handedly inventing public opinion polling, he served as historian and
promoter of the industry that could bring science to the straw polls.’ Gallup’s lifelong
effort combined promoting his polls as scientific and objective.9 At the same time, he
linked the polls to a democratic vision from the pastlo that in effect “bottled the air of
democracy,” Richard Reeves wrote in Esquire magazine in 1983, just before Gallup
died.ll Many scholars have noted the link between public opinion polling and

democratic politics.12 Gallup argued that the common man was wise and that the polls

 

Superpollsters: How They Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America (New York: Four Walls
Eight Windows, 1992) 56, 229; Lindsay Rogers, The Pollsters: Public Opinion, Politics, and
Democratic Leadership (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 3 n. 1.; Charles T. Salmon and Theodore
L. Glasser, “The Politics of Polling and the Limits of Consent,” 439-441; and Jean Converse, Survey
Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence [890-1960 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1987): 114-117.

“Cantril, “In Memoriam: George Horace Gallup, Sr. 1901-1984” 808; Hogan, “George Gallup and
the Rhetoric of Scientific Democracy,” 161-162.

7”America Speaks,” Washington Post 20 October 1935, see. 1,1 and sec 3, l.

'Converse, Survey Research, 115, 116; Hogan, “George Gallup and the Rhetoric of Scientific
Democracy,” 161, 163. ,

’Hogan, “George Gallup and the Rhetoric of Scientific Democracy,” 161-179; George Gallup,
“Measuring Public Opinion” Vital Speeches of the Day 9 March 9, 1936, 372; “Gallup Directs
Institute Polls for the Public,” The Washington Post, 20 October,l935, S 3, l.

'°“Bryce Named Poll as Best Opinion Test,” The Washington Post, 20 October, 1935, S 3, 1;
George Gallup and Saul F. Rae, The Pulse of Democracy: The Public Opinion Poll and How it Works
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940), 16-33.

”Richard Reeves, “George Gallup’s Nation of Numbers” Esquire, 100 (December, 1983): 91-94, 96,
92.

12Converse, Survey Research, 123-127; Childs, Public Opinion: nature, formation, and role. 30-31;
Price, Communication Concepts 4, 34; Herbst, Numbered Voices,; Philip E. Converse, “Changing
Conceptions of Public Opinion in the Political Process,” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (1987): 812-824;
Harold F. Gosnell, “The Polls and other Mechanisms of Democracy,” Public Opinion Quarterly 4
(1940): 414-424; John C. Ranney, “Do the Polls Serve Democracy,” Public Opinion Quarterly 10

246

used science and brought the views of the wise common man to the attention of
lawmakers and other participants in democracy. The public opinion poll could, he
wrote, “provide a continuous chart of the opinions of the man in the street.”13
What this dissertation has shown, however, is that a far different conception of
the common man dominated the articles that comprised Harwood Childs’ Princeton
University syllabus, A Reference Guide to the Study of Public Opinion, which was
from one of the first university classes in public opinion. It was published in 1934,
just before the time so many scholars call the founding of the field of public opinion."
The common man is not portrayed as wise and able to reason. Instead, the authors of
the articles in Childs’ syllabus portrayed a common man who needed guidance from
his betters and who was sometimes dangerous. It is unlikely that a common man
could have been perceived any other way by the elite men who wrote the syllabus
articles between 1886 and 1933. The authors views were structured by racialist
assumptions about the nature of human beings whom they saw as rank-ordered by
their nation-race with respect to their ability to govern themselves. If men are thought
to be rank-ordered in their ability based on the inheritance of their race-nation, and if a
government unit is made up of individuals from different race-nations, then it is

impossible to think of all members of the government unit as equal in their ability to

reason. The authors moved between the meanings of race-nation as unifying and race-

 

(1946): 349-360; John L. Martin, “The Genealogy of Public Opinion Polling.” The Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 472 (1984): 12-23.

l3George Gallup and Saul Forbes Rae, The Pulse of Democracy: The Opinion Poll and How It
Works (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940) v. See also pages 3, 4, 9, 287.

247

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

nation as dividing. They were inheritors of the idea of an ideal nation formed by
choices made by reasoning individuals—nation as citizenship—and a century of
drinking about race that inflected national differences as racial—nation as race. Their
opening to move fiom their trap between the meanings—nation as citizenship and
nation as race—was to find a way to change the political nature of others to resemble
themselves by guiding them, leading them, educating them.

Nearly all of the authors found the common man lacking and prescribed paths
for his improvement. In some cases, democracy depended on the improvement of the
common man. A few good editors could properly guide public opinion, restore
democracy and make government work, according to W.T. Stead, who wrote in
Contemporary Review in 1886.l5 Stead assumed that democracy needed saving. He
believed that his readers would have understood the threat to democracy from the
social changes around them. Jeremiah Jenks thought that a few good men could guide
public opinion, which he thought should be based on reason but, unfortunately, was
not. His common man was not wise; he needed guidance. Jenks wrote, “The duty, in
consequence, lies not merely on our politicians, but it lies on all intelligent, moral men
who have the welfare of the country at heart, to rouse, guide, shape public opinion?"
J enks thought unreasoning citizens could be guided to competence, however, not all

authors were so optimistic. Stead, Jenks and Nation Editor E. L. Godkin saw a

 

" Harwood Childs, A Reference Guide to Public Opinion (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1934).

"W.T. Stead, “Government by Journalism,” Contemporary Review 4 (May 1886): 653-674.

'6 Jeremiah W. Jenks, “The Guidance of Public Opinion,” American Journal of Sociology 1 (1895-
96): I64.

248

32*. .u

 

common man, unwise and needing of guidance. In the late 18905, Godkin thought the '
job of guiding the vast majority of common men could not be accomplished because
of the wide range of influences on people who had no capacity for continuous
attention.I7 Godkin vividly portrayed the impression of momentous social change as
being barely survivable. In 1912, F. Stuart Chapin assumed that most voters did not

cast votes based on reason, and that only a few on the margins were intelligent and

Edi
capable of voting independently." He was optimistic about the trend for the future, 3
despite his fundamental assumption that only a few were intelligent. George Kibbe

f‘VA‘}

Turner believed that the masses of voters were easily led, and he was concerned that
the money spent to influence elections was corrupting the political system.l9 Charles
Merriam celebrated the ability of his Committee on Public Information staff to lead
opinion in Italy during World War I. When he detailed his experiences in The
American Political Science Review in 1919, he emphasized that they were able to lead
opinion because facts were used to counter lies.20

The concern with the way democracy functioned, the need for a few men to
lead the common men, and the lack of a chorus of support for the wisdom of the
common man continued in the articles comprising Childs syllabus that were published

following World War I. Race-nation assumptions were more visible; however, they

 

'7 E. L. Godkin, “The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion,” The Atlantic Monthly, 131
(January 1898): 1-15.

" F. Stuart Chapin, “The variability of the popular vote at Presidential elections,” American Journal
of Sociology, 18 (1912): 222-240.

‘9 George Kibbe Turner, “Manufacturing Public Opinion: The New Art of Making Presidents by
Press Bureau,” McClure ’s Magazine, 39 (1912): 316-327.

2° Charles E. Merriam, “American Publicity in Italy, ” The American Political Science Review, 13
(November 1919): 541-555.

249

were slightly challenged by a changing conception of race. William Ernest Hocking
assumed that the majority needs leading and urged that better leaders be chosen. A
few good leaders from the best bloodlines were needed to lead the mass of people who
were not wise, or democracy might be threatened, Hocking wrote in The Yale Review
in 1924.21 The common will was understood to be consummation of mass suggestion
wrote Norman C. Meier in The American Journal of Sociology in 1925 after he tested
the idea that the common will was based on reason.22

William Munro attacked the creed that George Gallup would promote only a
decade later when he wrote “The Worst Fundamentalism” in Atlantic Monthly in
1926.23 Munro too maintained that citizens are unreasoning, and he urged an attack on
the dogma that asserts the public rules. He wrote, “Let me put together, in skeleton
form, the political creed of the average American citizen, the dogmas which he accepts

as fundamental truths notwithstanding their repugnance to the dictates of reason and to

\
”24

the teachings of experience. Munro attacked the consent of the governed,
government by the whole people, the rule of public opinion, and equality before the
law.” William Orton told readers of The American Journal of Sociology that mass

opinion was dangerous, and he called for a few good men to lead the unreasoning

many.“ Edward Corwin was certain not all men were rational, and he argued for

 

2' William Ernest Hocking, “Leaders and Led,” The Yale Review, 13 (July 1924): 625-641.

22 Norman C. Meier, “Motives in Voting: A Study in Public Opinion,” American Journal of
Sociology 31 (September 1925): 199-212.

23 William B. Munro, “The Worst Fundamentalism,” Atlantic Monthly 138 (1926): 451-459.

2‘ Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism” 452.

2’ Munro, “Worst Fundamentalism” 452.

2‘ William Orton, “News and Opinion,” American Journal of Sociology 38 (1927): 80-93.

250

 

(w

educated political scientists to fill the needed role of expert leaders in an article in The
American Political Science Review in 1929.“ He assumed that people could be led,
and he worried that the wrong sort were doing the leading. Corwin wrote, “Is it not
the lesson that if those who are best qualified by good will, lack of bias, trained minds,
and precise methods to do this work as it should be done, and for proper ends, do not
do it, others will—indeed are doing it at this moment—and for selfish ends? Is it not,
in short, that the real rulers of the race are those who educate it—who, in the word of
Mr. Lippmann, ‘create consent’?””
The elite male authors thought the common peOple were unwise, unreasoning,
unclean and sometimes dangerous because they thought of them as members of
different nationalities, and nationality was inflected with racialist stratification. The
authors made assumptions about nationality and race, and nationalism was a matter of
race. The meanings of the terms were so intertwined that labels distinguishing a
particular national from another national carried with them assumptions about the
individuals’ abilities. The authors also assumed important differences were
transmitted by blood, that ability and view were inherited. Arthur Bullard portrayed
Germans as enemies of civilization, and he thought Germans in America carried

political sympathy for the German war cause in their blood.” He referred to the

British and the Americans as Anglo-Saxon cousins.30 Walter Hamm revealed his

 

’7 Edward S. Corwin, “The Democratic Dogma and the Future of Political Science,” The American
Political Science Review 23 (1929): 569-592.

2‘ Corwin, “Democratic Dogma,” 589.

2’ Arthur Bullard, “Democracy and Diplomacy,” Atlantic Monthly 119 (April 1917): 495.

3° Bullard, “ Democracy and Diplomacy,” 497.

251

assumption that the migration of the previous century might have polluted the polity
when he reassured his readers that there would be no future threat to the purity of the
ballot because there would be no further dilution of the electorate.3| The Anglo-Saxon
countries were England, Canada, and the United States, and Edward Porritt casually
used the terminology in 1910, because his reader would understand."2 The Anglo-
Saxon countries were on the verge of having rule by public opinion, Shepard wrote.33
It was the Anglo-Saxon countries that contained people who were capable of reaching
an advanced stage of development in their type of government. There was an
underlying assumption of the progress of the race in F. Stuart Chapin’s argument for
measurement in 1912.” William F. Ogburn and Delvin Peterson linked language to
race, called the differences by national labels, and thought that a great deal of
difference—meaning people from many different race-nations—made it difficult to
govern.” They wrote, “One reason why good government is difficult in New York
City is the great heterogeneity of its population. In Austria-Hungary, also, a great
hindrance to the success of government is the great number of widely differing racial
groups?” Charles Merriam revealed the naturalness of nation and the intertwining of
the concept of nation and race when he described one member of a coalition. Merriam

wrote, “The minister of foreign affairs was Baron Sonnino, an active factor in the

 

3‘ Walter C. Hamm, “A Study of Presidential Votes,” Political Science Quarterly 16(1901): 50-67.

’2 Edward Porritt, “The Value of Political Editorials,” Atlantic Monthly 105 (January 1910): 62-67.

3’ Shepard, “Public Opinion,” 60.

3‘ F. Stuart Chapin, “The variability of the popular vote at Presidential Elections,” American Journal
of Sociology 18 (1912): 222-240.

3‘ William F. Ogburn and Delvin Peterson, “Political Thought of Social Classes,” Political Science
Quarterly (1916): 300-317.

252 ,

 

building of modern Italy—English, Jewish and Italian in race, conservative in
tendency and skilled in diplomacy?”
The intertwining of the concepts of race and nation continued following the
first world war in the articles that comprised Childs’ Princeton syllabus. Race-nation
became more prominent, and the commonplace assumption of the overlapping of the
concepts race and nation was gently contested. In a 1920 Atlantic Monthly article,
Paul Rohrbach described a shared national character carrying inherited traits and
explained that opinion was shared among members of a nation because they shared a
national character.” Joseph Geiger portrayed races as evolving.39 In explaining the
way in which nation should not be based on race, A. Gordon Dewey revealed how
commonplace it was to think of nation as race-based in 1924.’0 The work on social
distance done by Emory Bogardus revealed the intertwining of nation and race by his
students and displayed the college students’ feelings of antipathy toward members of

rank-ordered race-nations." Floyd Allport’s work in 1925 shows that race and nation

were on the social issues agenda.’2 Race and nation are used interchangeably by L. L.

 

3" Ogburn and Peterson, “Political Thought of Social Classes,” 301.

’7 Merriam, “American Publicity,” 545.

3' Paul Rohrbach, “German Reflections,” Atlantic Monthly, 125 (1920): 688-699.

’9 Joseph Roy Geiger, “The Effects of the Motion Picture on the Mind and Morals of the Young,”
International Journal of Ethics, 34 (October 1923): 69-83.

‘° A. Gordon Dewey, “On Methods in the Study of Politics 1,” Political Science Quarterly, 38
(1923): 636-651; “On Methods in the Study of Politics II” Political Science Quarterly, 39 (1924): 218-
233.

" Emory S. Bogardus, “Social Distance and Its Origins, ” Journal of Applied Sociology, 9 (January -
February 1924/1925): 216-226; “Measuring Social Distance, “Journal of Applied Sociology 9 (March- '
April 1924/1925): 299-308.

‘2 Floyd H. Allport and D. A. Hartman, “The measurement and motivation of atypical opinion in a
certain group” The American Political Science Review 19 (1925): 73 5-760.

253

Thurstone in “An Experimental Study of Nationality Preferences?” In 1927, William
Munro confirmed the commonplace assumption of racial determinism as natural.” He
wrote, “The determinism of racial heritage, at any rate, is a factor which all intelligent
students of comparative politics are accustomed to take into their reckonings.’”S

The first suggestion that race and nationality might be better thought of as
different from one another came in a 1927 article published in the Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology by Donald Young who found it foolish to think of
making distinctions between the English and the Swedish person.’6 He wrote, “It is
not to be denied that there may be important inherent mental differences between, say
the white, yellow, red and black races, though the final evidence is still lacking. It is
foolish, however, to attempt to distinguish between Swede and Englishman, Chinese
and Japanese?”7 He continued, “Individuals of any nationality or color may be the
equals of individuals of any other nationality or color?” Young was discouraged
because his students continued to think of race as nation, rather than, as he was
advocating, thinking of race as color. His students were comfortable in rank-ordering
other nationalities. It is apparent that the standard assumption of the 19205 in
academic articles concerned with public opinion was the assumption Young was

criticizing. He had help fiom Richard Lapiere, who was looking for sources of race

 

‘3 L.L. Thurstone, “An Experimental Study of Nationality Preferences, " Journal of General
Psychology 1 (1928): 405-423.

“ William Bennett Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” Yale Review 16 (1927): 723-738.

‘5 Munro, “Modern Science and Politics,” 728.

‘6 Donald Young, “Some effects of a course in American race problems on the race prejudice of 450
undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania, " Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 22
(1927): 235-242.

254

prejudice and who concluded that it was unlikely race prejudice was natural or
biologically based.’9 Lapiere used race and skin color interchangeably and treated the
terms Anglo-Saxon and Nordic with suspicion.

In a study of prejudice, James Reinhardt was surprised when his subjects found
other races or nationalities were more disliked than the Negro."0 Thurstone proposed a
way to use a comparative method of measuring preferences for people of specific
nationalities in “An Experimental Study of Nationality Preferences,” in The Journal of
General Psychology.’ ' He used nationality and race interchangeably. For Thurstone,
nationalities were gendered, and the range of nationalities described had diminished
from earlier articles by other scholars. Distinctions were no longer drawn among Jews
by nation of origin. Previously they had been described as Jew-Russian and Jew-
German—and the colonial euphemism Scotch-Irish had disappeared, as did Mulatto.

The common man could not be wise in a world that saw human beings
stratified by race-nationality. The authors of the articles in Childs’ syllabus worried
about democracy and unreasoning citizens because they perceived some citizens as
foreign nationals who were less able to reason than they were themselves. They knew
the foreign nationals were less able to reason because race-nation rank-ordered human
beings in their abilities. The treatment of the common man and race-nationality in

these articles supports Eric Hobsbawn’s characterization of the times as one in which

 

‘7 Young, “American race problems,” 240-241.

" Young, “American race problems,” 240-241.

‘9 Richard T. Lapiere, “Race Prejudice: France and England,” Social Forces 7 (1928): 102 — 111.

5" James M. Reinhardt, “Students and Race Feeling,” The Survey 61 (November 15, 1928): 239-240.

255

popular national superiority was easier to mobilize following years of migration.“2
Movements of national superiority were aided by theories of evolution, social
Darwinism and changing conceptions of race, Hobsbawm wrote.”

The authors of the articles lived during a time when the idea of race as
structuring the social and political order was axiomatic. Reginald Horsman and other
scholars explained that it was widely assumed that the Anglo-Saxon-Teuton would
eventually replace all inferior races.” Horsman wrote, “The Anglo-Saxonism of the
last half of the [nineteenth] century was no benign expansionism, though it used the
rhetoric of redemption, for it assumed that one race was destined to lead, others to
serve--one race to flourish, many to die. The world was to be transformed not only by
the strength of better ideas but by the power of a superior race?”

Contribution to the Literature on Public Opinion

This dissertation contributes a reconsideration of the foundation documents of
the field of public opinion and polling research. This reconsideration provides an
alternative to the conventional wisdom in the story of progress in the public opinion
field. This addition to the account of the concept of public opinion contributes a
disruption of the story of progress in the public opinion field. This dissertation

contributes by revealing that the strongest currents of the mainstream were those

 

5' L.L. Thurstone, “An Experimental Study of Nationality Preferences, ” Journal of General
Psychology 1 (1928): 405-423.

’2 Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalisms since 1780: Programme, myth, reality, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 91.

”Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 107-108.

“Horseman, Race and Manifest Destiny; Painter, Standing at A rmageddon; Young, Colonial Desire;
Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of The Frontier in the Age of Industrialization (New
York: HarperPerennial, 1994).

256

currents seeking to control the common man rather than to increase his participation in
governing.

This dissertation reveals a lack of congruence in meaning between the received
tradition and the documents of the canon. The origins story of public opinion
presented what has been the commonsense understanding of public opinion and
polling as the result of the progress made in a variety of areas over several decades.
Yet between the origins story of progress, Gallup’s promotion of public opinion as
equivalent to poll results, and the articles in Childs’ 1934 syllabus there exists a chasm
in meaning. The literature of the canon portrays at worst a dangerous, unclean
common man, and at best an unreasoning, easily persuaded common man. The
authors’ use of nation-race reveals the authors’ assumptions of difference based on
highly stratified conceptions of discreet differences between people. This
understanding of the authors’ meanings is only possible when their work is read
through the lens of recent scholarship on nationalism and race.

There were many uses of public opinion before 1936 in the articles that
comprised the public opinion canon. As public opinion was discussed in the articles,
it was apparent that, whatever the use of the term, those who were thought of as
leading public opinion filled a vital role because the great majority was unable to
reason. The common man was not wise. The common man was not wise because he
was not of a particular nation-race. The nation-race of a person was believed to

determine his or her abilities.

 

 

s’Horseman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 303.

257

The pollsters’ praise of the democratic potential for polling, especially
Gallup’s claim of the wisdom of the common man, could not have been based on the
public opinion social science of the time.

Importance of this study

Revealing the contradiction between the story that has been told and what was
actually in the documents as viewed through the understanding of race at the time
opens the entire story to reconsideration. Since the common man was not portrayed as

wise in the articles in Childs’ syllabus, it is possible to question any claim about the

 

relationship of polling to democratic participation. This analysis of the contents of the
public opinion canon makes it clear that the social relations of power were more
visible then than they are in the current received tradition.

When the current dominant idea of public opinion as equivalent to poll results
eclipsed all other meanings of public opinion, it became more difficult to remember
the ways in which human beings had been assumed to be stratified. With the existing
origins story placing the beginnings of the field with the beginnings of the journal
Public Opinion Quarterly, it seemed unnecessary to explore the understandings of the
concept before that time. This study has done extensive work on the history of public
opinion and found a meaning very different from today’s interpretation of public
opinion.

Meaning. . .

 

What was lost is the memory of the common sense of the stratification of

human beings by nation-race, and the institutional memory of the call for a few to save

258

democracy by controlling public opinion. Understanding the theories of nationalism
and race makes it possible to see the way in which individuals were viewed by the
wider elite culture and the authors of the articles in Childs’ syllabus. Knowing that
nationalism is not something natural, and that nationalism and nation have changed
meanings, makes it possible to have a richer understanding of public opinion. It is
possible to see that there were relations of power covered by the story of the progress
of public opinion. The received tradition of public opinion polling plays a part in
covering over a historical understanding of race, thus making it more difficult to
understand the present.

At the least, this dissertation gives support to the critic’s claims that public
opinion polling diminishes dissent. The image of a homogeneous united nation of
equal responding individual citizens in poll results is at odds with the perception of the
nation and its citizens before 1936. Race still matters, even if we have forgotten the
assumption of stratification of human beings by nationality as when the term nation
was inflected with race. Thinking of public opinion as poll results makes it more
difficult to see social stratification and interests that make material differences to
people. At the most, the success of public opinion as polling and the pollsters’ claims
to serve democracy covers relations of power that were previously visible. The
authors of the articles had no doubts that a few should lead because the many were
incompetent. Further, the results of this dissertation suggest that Gallup’s claim to

make the voice of the common man heard was perhaps not an advocacy of democratic

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practice, but rather a clever use of “popular dogma”—as Munro described it—to
promote his polls to the newspapers.

It is important to remember that the story of the development of public opinion
into polling is not seamless. Pollsters and survey researchers interested in political
issues have benefited from an evolutionary description of the field. In one sense, the
seamless story can be viewed as merely an outcome of social scientists’ efforts to
conform their methods to those of natural science. However, whether or not
intentional, the outcome has been to erase a richer understanding of the past.
Suggestions for Future Research

The history of the concept of public opinion in the early twentieth century has
only just begun to be explored by scholars, and this dissertation prompts additional
questions about the field.

How was nation-race portrayed in the articles in Public Opinion Quarterly
during the first two decades of the journal from 193 7-1957?

Is it possible to determine if Gallup intended the promotion of polls as
allowing the common man to speak as a method to promote his polls to newspapers?
A frequently asked question is, “What did Gallup really believe?” The AIPO papers
from the early years were lost in a fire and are not available to consult. However, the
question could be approached by looking at Gallup’s correspondence with the
newspapers that ran his poll results in 1935. The same material might reveal if Gallup

directed, or designed the promotion of the polls for the newspapers.

260

An analysis of elite newspaper editorials from 1886 to 1933 could be examined
to see if the same construction of nation-race is used.

An additional suggestion for future research would be to examine the lives of
the founders of Public Opinion Quarterly and their role in the emergence of
quantitative social science. Biographies of each of them would be a contribution to
the field. J

It is hoped that by this review and analysis of the articles in the public opinion 1

canon before 1936, future researchers will not be so limited in their interpretation of

 

l
the term but will include the full ramifications of its multiple meanings. l i

261

 

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