OUR FREEDOMS AND OUR OPINIONS

OUR FREEDOMS AND OUR OPINIONS

By PAUL T. CHERINGTON, M c K i n s e y & Company DESPITEindustry's traditional interest in the respective nature of individuals and society, the record shows that business men are still baffled because the existing techniques for bringing the two into a satisfactory relationship are faulty.

People in groups have joint qualities which may not be the mere totaling of individual units. Public opinion, for example, has strange and elusive qualities which have puzzled students for centuries. It is doubtful whether anyone in an ordinary lifetime could learn enough to arrive scientifically at as many sound judgments, covering an infinite variety of topics, as all of us hold with such great tenacity. Even scholars who have gone into these same topics with great care and thoroughness disagree about them or at least arrive at suspended judgments. Nevertheless, we go on forming our judgments, holding them with great firmness, and at times even fighting for them. Governnlent, ethics, morals, medicine, various branches of science, pedagogy, military strategy and tactics, and many other highly specialized subjects come within our scope and on them we are not afraid to express our views in general and in detail. This view of our own opinions, which most of us like to think are reasonably intelligent, does give ground for a little doubt concerning the factual background of at least some of the ideas on which our opinions are pretty firmly based. Nevertheless, group opinion, formed without undue pressure and expressed with accuracy and frankness, is the very founda-

tion of public opinion, and upon that many of our democratic institutions rest.

FREE SPEECH TODAY AND YESTERDAY

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press and some of our related rights we cherish as fundamental. The trouble is that we have allowed our ideas about these rights to remain static while the facts about them have greatly changed. These "rights" when the Constitution was adopted, represented some of the main features of both the formation and the expression of public opinion. If our forefathers could assemble, and read the papers and make speeches without danger of governmental wrath, they could form their opinions freely and could let them be known. And at the same time their representatives in government could by these same means be watched and adequately controlled.

Bur this is no longer a true picture of any of the three most important elements of an effective public opinion.

Public opinion now is formed by many devices other than assembly or speech or the press. Assembly and the press are less effective and influential than they were in shaping opinion, and other new phases of life have taken their place.

Radio broadcasts, syndicated columnists, newsreels, public relations counsel, news weeklies, press bureaus, the Ofice of War Information, and many other devices now tell us many things, even if they do not indicate what we had better believe. In short, the tools of propaganda and the techniques available for making

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PUBLIC OPINION QUARTERLY, WINTER 1942

effective use of them have been modernized.

In contrast with these new and powerful facilities for influencing public opinion there has been no corresponding growth-but an actual impairment-f the means available for its expression.

"Assembly" no longer means what it did in philadelphia in N~ auditorium in any city would hold such a representative cross-section of the voting population as could meet easily then. ~~d even if such a gathering were now possible, the individual would be submerged in the crowd. People are far better educated, better informed, more disposed to form tenable opinions; but they are practically devoid of any adequate modern substitute for those simple means of expression which have ceased to be feasible.

In the same way, they have lost contact with their chosen representatives in be public matters. They used in and listen to the lawmaking Process going On. But now distances are too great, and too serious to make this possible for than a handful.

the course of this reply he used three most significant expressions.

H e first remarked, ". . no hours of my day are better employed than those which bring me again within the direct contact and atmosphere of the average of Our Whole people."

TO which he added, ''Men moving only in an o6cial circle are apt to become merely official-not to say arbitrar~-in their ideas, and are apter with each passing day, to forget that they hold power in a representative capacity.

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this is wrong."

And he concluded with the observation: "I call these receptions my public opinion baths-for I have little time to read the papers and gather public opinion that way; and though they may not be pleasant in all particulars, the effect, as a whole, is renovating and invigorating."

The idea of a President getting guidance and renewal from contact with these poorly informed masses of people suggests some quality in the expression grouped or massed opinions which is something more subtle than mere aggregates of individual views. It may have been that Lincoln's own part in the exchange of views was quite as important HOW LINCOLN KEPT IN TOUCH as what he got from the visitors. But it was a~ means of expression of the public ~ i sensed~ this even ~ in his ~ day l mind which he at least found in and worked strenuously for a the formulation of his own thoughts Most writers on Lincoln-more recently Sandburg-have discussed the Presi- about some of the di6cult problems he faced. dent's reply to a critic who thought he ONE WAY TO RESTORE VOICE TO ought not to waste his time and energy DEMOCRACY in public receptions and in talking with the people in the crowds of curiosity The current elaboration of the forces visitors in Washington. Lincoln's reply shaping public opinion while the means expressed the longing he apparently felt of expression have, if anything, grown for the human contact he formerly had weaker, represents one of the great danin his humbler days in Illinois; and in gers to the continued effective operation

FREEDOMS A N D OPINIONS of democracy. Unless something is done to restore to democracy vocal powers comparable with its increased facilities for learning, it no longer can be the effective mechanism for popular government it once was. As suggestions concerning ways in which this balance may be restored, two specific developments are here mentioned.

The first development suggested for tightening up democracy, is a more orderly expansion of the use of crosssection statistical techniques for affording a voice to public opinion in time to do some good. Public opinion polls have been matters of dispute for several years, but they have made a real contribution to American democracy and are not only here to stay, but are destined to be made more use of as time goes on. Speaking as one who pioneered in this field for several years I raise the question whether this means of expressing public opinion does not have possibilities for more constructive use than have Yet been explored.

Perhaps a step at this stage in the development of the use of statistical methods would be the setting up of a special division in the Bureau of the Census to deal with statistical crosssections. This device, which has been used for years in many other fields-in biology, agriculture, commerce, mining and everywhere when sampling has been feasible-is applicable to this field of people with respect to many things and probably with respect to their opinions. ~t is, however, a field in which great care and skill are necessary; and one great advance in the techniques available for its profitable use would be to have access to carefully worked out statistical samples on which to base

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national, regional and local surveys of divergent opinions. If these data could be developed in a separate cross-section division of the Bureau of the Census and made available to qualified workers in this field, it would save them from many errors and make their work more useful. Much of the material in the new Census, tabulated in smaller units than hitherto, and covering many aspects of living conditions never covered before, together with the sampling plan tried out in this Census for the first time with respect to some items in the more expanded schedules, make this proposal seem more practicable than ever before.

The Census for obvious reasons would not be adapted to the actual conducting of opinion surveys. This is not a suitable undertaking for a government or political agency. It is essentially a job for impartial private enterprise.

PERFECTION OF TECHNIQUES

Another useful step in the wider use of this statistical device would be the further perfection of the techniques already in process of improvement for making the actual work of interviewing uniformly impersonal and accurate. Another would be the setting up of some adequate safeguard against too easy and people the taking polls, which because of the adequate "checking" in time may be used Purposes.

One of the most important points of all in connection with the whole subject of polls or surveys of opinion is the fact that if accurately planned and conducted they can give an idea of public opinion collected in time to be of use in making critical decisions of governmental policy.

PUBLIC OPINION QUARTERLY, WINTER 1942 Business men have been making use of these statistical devices long enough to have put them beyond doubt as to their value, when carefully used and intelligently interpreted.

T o summarize, one of the weakest factors in our democratic set-up is the fact that the influences bearing on public opinion are much farther developed and more powerfully implemented than are the means of expression of that opinion.

In any democratic society public opinion is the central power. It drives the whole thing. But public opinion is now beat upon by press, radio, organized propaganda, bloc organization, noisy leaders and other skilful drivers. T o record its reactions this much assailed "public opinion" or "voice of the people" has no correspondingly adequate means of expression. At intervals it can cast a secret ballot for a candidate of somebody else's choosing or can rebuke a man for a selfish act perhaps two years old. Some form of cross-section poll may offer a help toward bringing the voice of the people up to a degree of modernity comparable with its ears. What we really need is some good way to give the President a fireside chat-in which the public do all the chatting-from us to him.

KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH LAWMAKERS

A second suggested development grows out of the group of problems concerned with the increased insulation between the people and their chosen representatives in the government. Before democracy can really function properly, this insulation will need to be broken down. No better plan for this has been proposed than to put all public acts of all public servants under a mod-

ern type of scrutiny. T o put all sessions of Congress (House and Senate), all important committee hearings of both houses and most public sessions of executive and even other branches of government "on the air" is an obvious solution for the present lack of contact. The few joint sessions of Congress which have been broadcast heretofore-including some of the President's addresses on the state of the nation, and the session declaring war on Japan-were well worth while.

The similar broadcasting of regular sessions would be incredibly dull unless the fact of being on the air should serve to tone them up materially. If a Congressman were sure that before he took his seat after his speech the telegrams from constituents would begin to flow in, it might make him more careful of what he said and did.

At the Declaration of War broadcast, the spunk and nerve of the one member of Congress who wanted to vote against the war declaration was a case in point.

She was smothered, and people did not react favorably to her suppression, although their own opinions were quite different. Many people apparently were of the opinion that she had a right to her views, and a right to express themmistaken as they considered those views to be.

Broadcasting legislative sessions could not ordinarily rank as entertainment; but that would not be the purpose. If it is to be done it would only be desirable for the development of democratic vigor.

State legislatures and even the councils and other bodies governing our larger cities might well undergo some of the same modernization. The chances

FREEDOMS A N D OPINIONS are they won't. But they well might if they wish to avoid the looming alternative of undemocratic attempts to prevent the impotence due to the impeded return flow of the results of democratized thought.

A FIELD FOR CREATIVE INGENUITY

In any case, these two suggestions are illustrative of some of the forms of reconstruction of our ways of life which will need thinking about in line with the principles of established managerial practice. It is such changes as these that this war and its problems have made vital.

Congress finds itself under criticism for its own pension vote and for its liberal interpretation of its need for gasoline under the rationing system. These matters are secondary, and the criticism itself may not be serious. But the widespread attitude of the people that members of both houses of Congress listen to "bloc" leaders rather than to the people themselves is not a secondary matter.

Some of the best organized of the

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"pressure groups" of voters have as their representatives or lobbyists in Washington men who are intrinsically abler than the people's representatives with whom they have to deal. Hence, when these men come to tell the people's representatives what their particular bloc wants, they have the combined force of their own intrinsic abilities and of the impressive number of votes they claim to be able to influence. The mathematics of re-election can never be lost sight of by a member of Congress who seriously wants to return for another term-and most of them do.

T o anyone who believes that democracy is anything more than a name it is a matter for serious concern that so many means available for shaping and controlling public opinion have been strengthened and modernized, while the means for expressing this opinion and giving it contact with government processes have remained primitive or at least medieval. It is a challenge to American inventive ingenuity to devise ways for curing democracy of inarticulation.