The Snowflake herald., 1920-11-05
PUBLIC OPPOSES
GOVT OPERATION
Canvass of 5,154 Editors Shows
4,466 Communities Against
SoCiaIiStiC Experiment.
OPPOSITION GROWING
Eiqhty-seven Per Cent In 1920 az
Against 80 Per Cent in 1919
Think Public Is Opposed
to Radicalism.
OPPOSITION CROWN

The American public Is more In
tensely opposed to Government opera
tion than it was a year ago. according
to the newspaper editors of the coun-
try. Out of 5,154 editors replying TO
a QUESTIONABLE sent out by the Press
Service Company of New York, 4,466,
or Sc per cent. gave it as their judg-
ment that the people of their commu-
mites we're overwhelmingly against
the Government competing in business
with its own citizens.
In 1919 the Press Service Company
conducted a similar canvass of editors
on the government operation Of rail-
roads. That QUESTIONABLE showed that
SO per cent of the editors considered
their communities against Govern
ment operation of public utilities
Apparently. then, if editors estimate
public opinion accurately, that opin-
ion in a year, considered by commu-
mites. has swung 3 per cent farther
away from socialistic experiments.
Eleven Million Circulation.
The combined circulation Of the pa
pers whose editors replied is LAPS
S17, which means, according to the
usual estimated ratio between circula-
ton and readers, a constituency of at
least 44,OO0OOO And this constituent
cy is pretty evenly scattered through
out the country, no considerable sec
ton of any state being unrepresented.
The estimate of opinion based on this
thoroughly diffused "A per cent of the
cOuntry's population may, therefore,
be considered a fair representation of
the people as a whole.
Another feature of the result is It's
evident lack of partisan bias. The
major political affiliations of the pa
pers represented are fairly evenly di
vided, being 1857 Republican and
1850 Democratic There are also 1,4S5
independent and 462 miscellaneous,
including labor organs, etc.
How little the results are affected
by the politics of the papers is shown
in an analysis by sections. In the
Southern section, for instance, where
replies came from 65 Republican pa
pers and $50 Democratic, the per-
centage against Government operation
was IS; in the Great Lake section,
with conditions reversed, 478 Repub-
lican and 155 Democratic. the oppo-
sition was 81 per cent.
Replies from the West, Middle West
and Southwest show that it is a mis-.
take to consider those sections vastly
more favorable to radical Government
TNI,o
icaIs can get little comfort out of the
80 per cent of thumbs down. per
cent above the average-in the South.
west, including Arkansas, Louisiana,
Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Tex.
as. Texas, once supposed to be much
given to Government regulation ex-
periments, returned 90 per cent of un-
favorable replies. Out of the PA edi.
tors replying from that state only
three edited Republican papers. The
81 per cent opposition of the North
west, including Iowa, Minnesota, Mon
tana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South
Dakota and Wyoming, and the SO per
cent veto of the Far West group, in
cluding Arizona, California, Idaho,
Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Colo
rado, Utah and Washington, are sig
nificant Of the prevailing conservative
sentiment on this question even in
the more radical sections.
Judgment Apparently Unbiased. ;.
The QUESTIONABLE closes with re-
quest for the editors personal opin-
ion on certain concrete cases as fol-
lows:
do you personally believe that the
Federal Government should own and
operate competitive industries to pro-
vide: (a) Fertilizer (b) Clothing?
(c) Automobiles? (d) Farm imple-
ments? (e) Foodstuffs2
Substantially all the editors who
gave estimates of their readers opin-
ions also expressed their own by re-
plying to this last question. Proof Of
effort to avoid personal
bias is found in the fact that in many