A Troubled Birth: The 1930s and American Public Opinion 9780226813073

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A Troubled Birth

Chicago Studies in American Politics A series edited by Susan Herbst, Lawrence R. Jacobs, Adam J. Berinsky, and Frances Lee; Benjamin I. Page, editor emeritus Also in the series: Prisms of the People: Power and Organizing in Twenty-First-Century America by Hahrie Han, Elizabeth McKenna, and Michelle Oyakawa The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era by James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee Democracy Declined: The Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection by Mallory E. SoRelle Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics by LaFleur Stephens-­Dougan America’s Inequality Trap by Nathan J. Kelly Good Enough for Government Work: The Public Reputation Crisis in America (And What We Can Do to Fix It) by Amy E. Lerman Who Wants to Run? How the Devaluing of Political Office Drives Polarization by Andrew B. Hall From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape ­Religious Identity by Michele F. Margolis The Increasingly United States: How and Why American Political Behavior Nationalized by Daniel J. Hopkins Legacies of Losing in American Politics by Jeffrey K. Tulis and Nicole Mellow Legislative Style by William Bernhard and Tracy Sulkin Why Parties Matter: Political Competition and Democracy in the American South by John H. Aldrich and John D. Griffin Neither Liberal nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public by Donald R. Kinder and Nathan P. Kalmoe

A Troubled Birth The 1930s and American Public Opinion Susan Herbst

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

On the cover: Men lining up for a cheap meal during the 1930s. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2021 by The University of Chicago

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University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21  1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-­13: 978-­0-­226-­81291-­5 (cloth)

ISBN-­13: 978-­0-­226-­81310-­3 (paper)

ISBN-­13: 978-­0-­226-­81307-­3 (e-­book)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226813073.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Herbst, Susan, author.

Title: A troubled birth : the 1930s and American public opinion /  Susan Herbst.

Other titles: Chicago studies in American politics.

Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2021. | Series:  Chicago studies in American politics | Includes bibliographical  references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021012759 | ISBN 9780226812915 (cloth) |  ISBN 9780226813103 (paperback) |

 ISBN 9780226813073 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Public opinion—United States. | United States—

 Politics and government—1929–1933. | United States—Politics  and government—1933–1945.

Classification: LCC HN90.P8 H495 2021 | DDC 303.3/80973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021012759 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO

Z39.48-­1992 (Permanence of Paper).

In memory of my brilliant and wildly imaginative mentor, James R. Beniger. I got lucky.

Contents

1 Introduction: Birth of a Public 1 2 President in the Maelstrom: FDR as Public Opinion Theorist 37

3 Twisted Populism: Pollsters and Delusions of Citizenship 79

4 A Consuming Public: The Strange and Magnificent New York World’s Fair 116

5 Radio Embraces Race and Immigration, Awkwardly 152 6 Interlude: A Depression Needn’t Be So Depressing 193 7 Public Opinion and Its Problems: Some Ways Forward 212 Acknowledgments 239 Notes 241 Selected Bibliography 277 Index 293

1 * Introduction

Birth of a Public

Towering over Presidents and State governors, over Congress and State legislatures, over conventions and the vast machinery of party, public opinion stands out, in the United States, as the great source of power, the master of servants who tremble before it.

James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, 1888

“Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good, an’ they die out. But we keep a comin’. We’re the people that live. Can’t nobody wipe us out. Can’t nobody lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa.”

Ma Joad, The Grapes of Wrath, 19401

No one predicted the near-­simultaneous appearance of a global health crisis, the resulting crash of economies, a surge in protests across the world over race discrimination, the refusal of a sitting president to accept the outcome of a legitimate national election, and a violent invasion of the Capitol building by insurrectionists inspired by their president. Yet in the years before these profoundly impactful events of 2020 and 2021, we had plenty of other surprises in our politics: the rise of the Tea Party and other novel forms of partisan rage, the election of our first African American president and its varied impacts, flamboyant rejection of empirical reality by cable news figures, a rapid proliferation of conspiracy theories, and the fierce, cult-­like populist uprising fueled by a wealthy celebrity real estate developer. We failed to predict Donald Trump’s astoundingly rapid domination of a major political party, his reshaping of the culture inside the US Senate, his tyrannical war against so many truths, and his frightening interventions in the workings of institutions we had typically accepted as supporting the public good—­the Justice Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the US Postal Service. Also not predicted was the emergence of a novel incivility in public discourse—­its uniquely coarse tone and its loose adherence to facts, both shaped by the linguistic peculiarities of Twitter. All of these current phenomena matter immensely, so academics interested in politics have rushed

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to press with questions, concerns, and a frantic search for explanations. Pundits and journalists have been vital, trying to parse the events, albeit with varying degrees of thoughtfulness and sincerity. And these phenomena loom large for every citizen as well; they undergird most all daily media content that we watch, read, retweet, and talk about. The bottom line: We live in a period characterized by partisan polarization, cynicism about our institutions, and a generally mean-­spirited ruckus so extraordinarily loud that folks from all walks of life fear each other and question the very possibility of democracy.2 The precursors to these phenomena—­attitudes, trends, cultural artifacts such as television programs, and conspiratorial websites—­were all there in public view, but clearly they were not properly studied. My own scholarly community is partly to blame, and our only excuse is that it was all complex, fluid, and bigger than we thought. This is a book about how we might do better, not through sophisticated statistical models or more huge attitude surveys, although both are always welcome tools. Anything is worth a try, given what is typically at stake for a nation. Instead, this book grapples with how “the public” and “public opinion”—­as concepts that undergird this nation and make it vulnerable to antidemocratic movements—­came to be. I argue, through the lenses of social and intellectual history, why these fundamental concepts led us into an iron cage of assumptions, biases, and expectations that make us passive, vulnerable to authoritarian behavior of leaders, anti-­ intellectual, and generally resistant to what should be our citizenly duties. The ways we developed our notions of the public and its sentiments long ago came back to haunt us, and in 2021 we need to understand and face it all. I draw on work by historians, social scientists, and journalists to underscore that “the public” and resulting “public opinion” are moving targets without precise definitions that might last over time. Nonetheless, they are always with us in thought and rhetoric. Terms like these have an exceedingly strong gravitational pull for us because they imply cohesion, even if not unity. And no democratic nation can last without at least some solidity, as well as a deeply felt notion that we exist together in a bounded community. At the same time, we are an extraordinarily diverse nation. The real, empirical fault lines and divisions—­race, ethnicity, class, region, religion—­have always been there but were masked by our desire to become an American public. As a result of this unbending hope, expressed so beautifully by so many leaders, there simply must be a discernible, coherent, opining public that matters. Various leaders and institutions had their reasons for creating or reinforcing such fictions, but average citizens found the idea of a coherent

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public attractive as well. It is inspiring and moving to be part of a generally homogenous whole, whether privileged or not. White Americans, regardless of class, had no real psychic distance to travel: Of course the public was and should be white at its base. But even those who were de­ nied a place in mainstream white America—­African Americans, Latinos, Jews, Irish, Chinese, and immigrants of all ethnicities—­harbored great hopes that the notion of a “public” would become increasingly expansive and inclusive. The moments when minority groups crept closer, with recognition of their right to vote or election of members of Congress from their communities, prompted this perpetual hope. After all, we have always strived for a more perfect union; America is a work in progress. One might object immediately to this thesis: Why, we always recognized different groups and their opinions, whether we let those opinions matter or not in public policy making. From the early days of polling to the present, we see data divided up by race, ethnicity, and income—­how many whites like this or that relative to Blacks, or how wealth affects opinions. But these are fleeting moments and are seen as divisions on particular candidates and issues—­divisions of attitudes that can and do change (which is why we are subject to continual polls, and why pollsters remain in business). That we have haphazard “cross tabs” of the public, flying across our screens, is a distraction from the much larger matter: We think there is a public (even if divided here and there, now and then, on this and that) and feel that it is important to be one. If not, how can we call ourselves a nation or see ourselves as citizens? It would make little sense to teach our children the Pledge of Allegiance, sing the national anthem at sporting events, support our soldiers, or celebrate the Fourth of July. These rituals are dear to us, but only because we have been taught to believe in our membership—­tortured or not—­in a “public.” The fictional public is, as we see throughout this book, white, rational, informed, participatory, open, and fair. The actual public has always been very different, but this complexity didn’t really “work” in the early decades of the twentieth century. Division was uncomfortable. Rhetoric, events, and ideas—­that might conceal wide fissures in the public—­were needed if we were to feel like a coherent whole, and they were pursued in earnest in the 1930s by different actors for different reasons. This book is also a provocation about looking back to look forward and taking history more seriously, both the tales of political characters and—­more unusual, challenging, and annoying for a political scientist at least—­the history of popular culture. We will only understand the most dramatic transformations in American public opinion and changes in the shape of democracy itself if we take a different sort of look at the eras that have mattered most in our evolution. Here I choose an obvious

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one: the 1930s. I will not argue that the 1930s were a discernible canary in the coal mine, somehow holding all the antidemocratic tendencies we see blossoming right now, or that the profound fissures and divisions in the public were masked once and for all during a particular decade. This would just be too easy and too mechanically simpleminded to be helpful. However, to ignore the profoundly important leaders, writers, institutions, entertainments, and tendencies of the Great Depression years would be bizarre as well. I walk the middle path, which seems the most sensible place to be: The Depression years were, for a variety of reasons, a time when our ideas about the public emerged, full force. Some of the ideas have had real staying power. Other notions of the 1930s have not lasted but are still useful in mapping our moment here in the 2020s, my sole subject for the book’s final chapter. Throughout, I try my hand at a mixed-­method, wide-­ ranging meditation on what that period means for us today. It is a path walked in part by historians—­students of the past far more erudite than I. It is their extensive work that makes it possible for political scientists to build out our own field in more imaginative, culturally sophisticated ways as we study the strange new reality that is now American politics. While I have read widely about the 1930s across disciplines and conducted my own primary research, much of this book stands on secondary research, and indeed, on the shoulders of many giants in twentieth-­century history and social science.3 Famous political observers of the past warned us to take heed of our history, our social life, our cultural sensibilities, our prejudices, our habits, and our flaws as we thought about the public and public opinion. Public opinion is, they argued, a morass of high-­minded ideals and the messy realities of the social world on the ground. There is nothing, they argued, more important to understanding American democracy than illuminating what the public is, why public opinion moves as it does, and how both matter in self-­governance. This is not to say that presidents, Congress, or parties don’t matter; of course they do. Yet the character of all institutions is shaped by public opinion, whatever we say that is. It is an unfortunate reality that our institutions are in fact built upon the most difficult-­to-­understand thing of all—­the people and their sentiments. No institution or force in democracy is more foundational, more muddled, or more fluid than public opinion, the uneven ground everything else in democracy is built upon. So: we were warned about the intensity of focus and imaginative forms of observance we would need to undertake in assessing the evolution of opinion in our democracy. For example, Lord Bryce, the British scholar and ambassador who traveled throughout America in the late nineteenth century, shared the sentiment of John Steinbeck’s fearless matriarch

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Ma Joad: The public and its sentiments are the foremost features of our democracy, and they are reflective of real, often perplexing lives. A refined gentleman observer of the very highest British social class saw precisely what Steinbeck did decades later, channeling an Okie on her grueling journey west to California: culture and public opinion were manifest in the everyday activities of the people and not only during political campaigns or election years. We will never know public opinion through vote totals, horse-­race polling, rally sizes, or fleeting (if harrowing) internet traffic by political activists or conspiracy theorists; these are transient. They will always need to be studied, but within the perspective of more lasting or engrained aspects of cultural evolution. Both Steinbeck and Bryce had followed a previous observer, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville. In his writings during the years before the Civil War Tocqueville drew a portrait of a public to be feared and exalted—­respected for its organic wisdom, for its defects, and for its sheer force. The fluid composition of the American public itself and its social tendencies were hard to pin down, but it was worth trying: Even if murky, public opinion made men and institutions great or could destroy them on a whim. He saw that the earliest settlers and the newcomers were a diverse crew, a mind-­bogglingly rich assembly of people, coming from all directions to stake their claim or avoid persecution. It was an awesome thing to behold, that engine driving the so-­called American experiment. The experiment was conducted in a gritty laboratory where Native Americans were crushed and the most brutal forms of human bondage were perfectly acceptable in the eyes of so many. The nation evolved; its people came together, came apart, and argued constantly about the nature of America. In any case, Tocqueville was certain that their leaders would do well to keep far more than a finger on the pulse of the people. Tocqueville and Bryce undertook arduous journeys on horseback and via steamboat, stagecoach, and eventually locomotive. Tocqueville traveled extensively, mostly east of the Mississippi. Bryce went farther, and, in his role as British ambassador to the United States, visited every state. Their two masterworks covering American institutions, founding documents, laws, politics, sentiments, and tendencies—­Democracy in America and The American Commonwealth—­stood as the most comprehensive and candid assessments of a new nation, written with the special sensibilities of outsiders. After Bryce wrote The American Commonwealth in the late nineteenth century, however, there was an odd and quite astounding lull in generating big ideas and theories about the public and public opinion in America. For decades no driven intellectual, with a bent for keen analytic writing at least, traveled the nation by boat, horseback, or automobile trying to discern the general state of a nation ruled by its varied people.

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Until the 1930s, that is, when all of a sudden the nature of “the people” seemed critically important to many parties—­from President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Hollywood studios to journalists, municipal leaders, educators, artists, and writers. We simply had to understand the public and its sentiments to try and make sense of the chaos all around. It was the decade of Ma Joad’s escape westward in the midst of the worst economic moment Americans had ever seen. There was an extended, catastrophic series of droughts throughout an enormous section of the west, bank collapses everywhere, staggering unemployment levels, and, by the end of the decade, a growing, ominous sense that the Great War had not been the end of horrific foreign entanglements but was only the beginning. How could a democracy survive the doom evident all around? Who are the people, what drives them, and what do they think? Would they—­ever again—­ believe a president’s rhetoric, trust the government, buy newly invented consumer goods, or fight for their country and its institutions when democracy was serving them so poorly? I argue that the 1930s are the most important years in understanding American public opinion as we know it today. To all people living during the period, it seemed that they inhabited an extraordinary moment, no matter their role: analyst, entertainer, persuader, or simple American citizen. And it was. So much happened in the 1930s. There was the overwhelming and riveting experience of the Depression, the omnipresence of a charismatic president, the rapid diffusion of our first national broadcast media, the terrifying rise of totalitarianism abroad, and the ceaseless efforts of American industry to solidify a potent consumer culture. The latter seized our attention through new forms of intensive advertising and marketing, shaping the buying public we still are today. “The public” and “public opinion” as we know them now are products of an astonishingly dark moment in American history—­dark, formidable, and robust. We are still trapped in the web of ideas about the people—­ about us—­formed in the 1930s, even as we live in a different sort of volatile economy, during a disastrous pandemic we don’t yet fully understand, and in a far different media environment than early broadcasters could ever have imagined. In the chapters that follow, I argue that our contemporary notion of public opinion—­how we see its character, the assumptions we make about it, and the dangers it poses—­was born during the Great Depression and born there for a reason. Put another way, this is an origin story, an archeology of public opinion as an idea—­a profound idea that matters. The bones we uncover in our dig are awfully jumbled, but they are the ones we have. In our own time we are so polarized on so many dimensions that we can’t help but wonder: Are we even an American “people” or a “public”?

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Were we ever? One of the foremost cultural historians of the twentieth century, Warren Susman, pinpointed the 1930s as the moment we—­not actively meaning to—­somehow became a people, and here I provide more and varied evidence for his case. I also argue that “the public” (my conceptual focus here) was a body formed in quite grand but highly problematic fashion, something Susman would likely have agreed with had he lived to see the politics of the 2020s. It was in the 1930s that we were forced together as a public, fighting among ourselves, yet celebrated incessantly in popular culture. We were told that we were a public, from the poetry of Carl Sandburg (The People, Yes) to the movies of a brilliant and intensely ideological Frank Capra. That director’s enormously popular films praised John Doe and Mr. Jefferson Smith, average Americans, naive and good-­natured. They were characters that came to the fore not as great or supremely talented men but simply as standard bearers for the honest and cohesive people. It was Professor Susman who found a cruder but equally effective messenger in Ma Joad: The poor folks, the common people, are as deeply defiant and genuinely American as they are wise. As Susman put it, the 1930s were quite simply “the heyday of the people.”4

But Why, Exactly, Do the 1930s Still Matter? The 1930s were the authentic birthplace of modern American public opinion. Multiple, quite remarkable forces stand out from that period: the compelling character of FDR’s communicative leadership, the meteoric rise of professional pollsters, the pervasive messaging from America’s industrial giants and their proponents (national and municipal), the exhilarating effects of radio at home and in the workplace, the appeals of early “infotainment,” and the fascinating start of “self-­help” movements. All of these forces were manifest in wildly different forms—­best-­selling books, broadcast programs, films, speeches, advertising campaigns, survey data, and World’s Fairs in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. And all these forces foreshadowed, shaped, and twisted the nature of public opinion. In our time, we see some of the more worrisome lasting effects. By understanding the context of their emergence, we add new dimensions to our picture of political culture nearly one hundred years ago, and as important, we trace and dissect the continuing dangers we face in conceptualizing public opinion. The 1930s was one of our most profoundly trying decades. Only a few years before, during the 1920s, Americans felt the thrilling end of a brutal war and the excitement of a booming consumer economy. But the mood was ruined in short order by an apocalyptic economic collapse and

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another looming world war. Along with the Civil War period, the 1930s scarred and defined us like no other decade. As so many historians have argued, the years of the Great Depression will always somehow be here, deeply engrained in law, in our array of government departments, in our social welfare benefit structure, in the practices of advertising and marketing. And the 1930s are literally built into our observable infrastructure through the sheer number of public buildings, bridges, roads, and forests in every region of the country. We have, thankfully, extensive photography, murals, literature, music, correspondence, and precious oral histories all funded by the New Deal. There was even an impressive series of state guidebooks compiled from 1937 through 1941 by armies of writers commissioned by Roosevelt’s Federal Writers’ Project. It was a project that underscored the unity of the people across a vast land. The books inspired middle-­class Americans to hit the open road and told them where to go in each of the forty-­eight states, who lived there and why, and what to see, eat, and experience.5 Yet these creative, practical, artistic, and literary projects, meant to inspire, also grappled with the unavoidably grim nature of current events. It was, after all, the era of rising brutal dictatorships and natural disasters. The cultural historian Lawrence Levine put it well: America’s mind has seldom strayed too far from that year [1929] of trauma and the decade of depression that followed it. Every economic setback since the Second World War has brought inevitable comparisons with, and pervasive fears of, a return to the conditions that prevailed during the Great Depression. The thirties have become one of the most essential criteria by which we measure our well-­being and security.6

The sheer misery of the Depression is always with us, in part because scenes of it are so often shown on television and film. There is astoundingly good documentation of American trauma from coast to coast—­from urban unemployment and bread lines to desolate, dusty, rural poverty. These agonies were captured in song and prose, in fiction and journalism, but perhaps most powerfully by Walker Evans and other talented photographers of the day, Dorothea Lange, Berenice Abbott, and Margaret Bourke-­White among them.7 Compounding the anxieties, so visually stunning, was a deep insecurity, a fear of starvation and illness that remains despite a mythology (built by Franklin Roosevelt himself along with his allies) that the New Deal spirit would somehow conquer fear. “Fear itself” is something we can control if we see things through a proper lens. But the 1930s threw us off balance, and we never quite regained it. We say so often that America

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Figure 1.1. Lining up for a meal. We have seen so many haunting images of men waiting for food and work during the Depression that they are deeply engrained in the American consciousness. Photographs of lines during the period, taken by journalists, federally supported professionals, and amateurs are numerous because they so efficiently communicate the stunning scale of neediness in urban settings. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

is an “experiment,” yet the 1930s showed us vividly what a failed experiment looks like. The experiment could end with an economy destroyed and a people destroyed as well. Those images so deep in our collective memory don’t just go away. In the 1930s terror was felt everywhere, not only in the destitute urban tenement houses, in shanties under bridges where people sought shelter, or on the dilapidated front porches of the South and the Midwest. The economic downturn battered dreams of the middle class, the folks who thought they were doing pretty well in what had been a ceaselessly expanding nation just a few years before. And so people turned their hopes to President Roosevelt, elected in 1932. Roosevelt and his allies were powerful, with the authority to subsidize industries, build programs, and, critically, feed the hungry. Others, like the “Radio Priest,” Father Charles Coughlin, used the new broadcast medium of radio to argue their own platforms for overcoming the Depression. And still others ignored the church and government, instead promoting human agency and individual gumption as ways to buck up the national mood. Volumes about wars, travel, and myriad nonfiction works were best sellers during the Depression, but books designed to map how Americans could navigate hard times successfully, protect themselves, relax, and enjoy life

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were consumed with vigor too. Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) did exceedingly well in sales and still does, yet there were other types of social guidebooks like Marjorie Hillis’s Orchids on Your Budget: Or Live Smartly on What You Have (1937), Roger Babson’s Cheer Up! Better Times Ahead (1932), and Edmund Jacobson’s You Must Relax: A Practical Method of Reducing the Strains of Modern Living (1934).8 They sold because everyone was asking the same questions: What is an average person supposed to do, practically speaking, in the face of national trauma and hardship? And what does it mean to be an American when you can’t buy what you want, appear the way you’d like, entertain in style, or merely cope in a world where you struggle to feed your family? Towering over all the filmmakers, radio broadcasters, and self-­help pioneers was the reality and the fantasy of a New Deal, in all of its flawed majesty. It was a set of programs but also a flamboyant American promise: that a nation in time of need might be preserved by the federal government itself, working toward cohesion with great humanitarianism. When things were bad enough, the American president and Congress would and should step in to help the desperate, with the enormous authority to move massive resources and establish new institutions, institutions that cared about the people. As historian Richard Hofstadter wrote when he looked back from his university perch in 1961, the New Deal sensibility was a kind of pervasive tenderness for the underdog, for the Okies, the sharecroppers, the characters in John Steinbeck’s novels, the subjects who posed for the FSA [Farm Security Administration] photographers, for what were called, until a revulsion set in, “the little people.” . . . Where Progressivism had capitalized on a growing sense of the ugliness under the successful surface of American life, the New Deal flourished on a sense of the human warmth and the technological potentialities that could be found under the surface of its inequities and its post-­depression poverty.9

Historian Jefferson Cowie noted recently that key to understanding the unique nature of the period was the new emphasis on collective economic rights.10 Cowie sees empathy for “the Forgotten Man” as a missing piece in American political thought: “Even before the coming of the financial crisis of 2007–­2008, the New Deal has been metaphor, analogy, political principle, and guiding light for all that must be returned to the progressive side of American politics.”11 Another major reason why the 1930s are so important is how determinative they became for our alliances, our stature, and our behavior as a nation. Ira Katznelson argues that fear overwhelmed American culture

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on all dimensions, but that Roosevelt did not somehow crush or bury fears. Instead they became central to our world outlook and the driver of our actions as we entered the war and long after. The 1930s forced us to question our confidence about democracy as the best way, relative to authoritarian systems: With the boundaries and capacities of liberal democracy in question . . . fear defined the context within which political action in the United States proceeded. . . . Fateful and transformative, New Deal decisions were more fundamental, more likely to be irrevocable. What was unclear was whether America’s political institutions could tame fear and produce tolerable risk at least as well as the dictatorships.12

Basic human suffering, uncertainty that democratic government could solve problems, and the seeming widespread, global appeal of dictators and demagogues unsettled us. These particular fears emerged at the same time as notions of a resilient, admirable, honest American public (those good common people in Capra’s film, who believed Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith over a corrupt US Congress). It was in the 1930s that fear and anxiety were baked into notions of the public itself, but somehow, hopes and optimism were baked in as well. Fear and optimism stood in high, constant tension with each other. On the one hand, we had much to fear—­for ourselves, our families, and our communities. On the other hand, if we held tight to our pioneering spirit and a kindly federal government (Hofstadter’s empathy and “sense of human warmth”), perhaps we’d make it through the darkness?13 This contradictory mix of sentiments characterized a struggling public in the1930s, without doubt. When a nation is faltering in the face of horrendous economic decline there are threats to democracy from all sides, but in the 1930s, there was no need to imagine alternative systems that might challenge our own. Those alternatives were blossoming right in front of us. A surge toward fascism or communism was believed quite possible for America, and it loomed as a phantom over a struggling federal government, over our belief in capitalism, and over the entire culture. People from all walks of life worried aloud about the imminent annihilation of the United States by other ideological systems. There was melodrama, wildly effective persuasion, and danger presented by nationally prominent demagogic leaders: Governor (then Senator) Huey Long of Louisiana coming from the left and the immensely popular antisemitic Father Coughlin of Michigan coming from the right. These were merely the most flamboyant public threats to President Roosevelt’s vision. As the historian Jon Meacham recently reminded us, there was even a bizarre but real threat from wealthy

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Figure 1.2. Elm Grove, Oklahoma. Dorothea Lange and the photographers of the Farm Security Administration enabled America to see precisely how grim life in rural counties had become. It was extraordinarily important because most city folks and political leaders in urban areas—­Roosevelt’s “brain trust” included—­couldn’t easily gauge the real texture of rural poverty many other ways. This photograph was taken in Elm Grove, a town in the Ozarks, in 1936. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

New Yorkers, who joined the radical fringe, hoping to somehow vanquish Roosevelt. A cadre of men from Wall Street designed a plot to have retired Marine major general Smedley Butler raise an army and capture the federal government. It was the “Wall Street Putsch,” and the goal was an establishment of a fascist state, one presumably more friendly to the economic elite.14 Alas Butler was a poor choice, as he turned around and revealed the plot to the FBI. It was serious, and as Congressman John McCormack of Massachusetts noted later, anything was possible given the

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panicked climate of the times, the frustration with the downward slide of America, and irrational flailing in all directions. There were fears of dictators and real political plots, and the 1930s were a hotbed for conspiratorial thinking, something resurgent in our own time. Hofstadter famously wrote about what he called the “paranoid style in American politics”—­a long-­standing feeling among some Americans that they are persecuted by wily forces trying to gain power and money in nefarious ways. It is a “style of mind” where individuals are not paranoid in a clinical sense, but in a cultural one: They feel as though while they are patriotic, loyal, and unselfish, there are other people and institutions out to destroy their way of life. Paranoid fantasies have drawn the attention of millions, whether they were fears of the Illuminati in the late eighteenth century, anti-­Masonic paranoia in the early nineteenth century, major finance conspiracies in the 1890s about gold merchants, conspiracies about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, and so forth. In our day of an internet free to all, it is far easier to spread conspiracies, and so they have become a defining aspect of American politics, even within mainstream political parties (e.g., President Trump’s warnings about a “deep state” intent on undermining his administration). It was during the 1930s, Hofstadter notes, that paranoid thinking reached a climax: FDR’s New Deal was alleged to put so much of the economy under federal control that it would be easy for socialists and communists to take over the entire apparatus of government. Importantly, Hofstadter notes that the enemy is always sinister, always out to wreak havoc. Destruction is imminent. He wrote: The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a “vast” or “gigantic” conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy, set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is not the usual methods of political give-­and-­take, but an all-­out crusade.15

One need only look at any newspaper or tune into cable news or the internet to find numerous conspiracies of this world-­historical magnitude running rampant in American politics. It is in the 1930s that the paranoid style was perfected in its general outlines, used by members of the major political parties, and accessible to the average citizen simply by tuning in to hear the “Radio Priest.”16 Or one could go to the local cinema to see a new genre of films about the enemy within—­corrupt police, district attorneys, and news media.17 Conspiracies in American history typically present a dichotomy: It’s us (genuine Americans) versus the un-­American

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people and organizations committed to the destruction of democracy and culture. While this is not a book about conspiracies, it does force the right questions for this and any meditation about American public opinion. Who are Americans, psychically speaking? Are they rightfully paranoid? Are they dupes? Or do they have that basic, rational, friendly can-­do purity you see in a Norman Rockwell scene—­characters who could never really go that far awry? All these matters loomed larger than ever in the 1930s, and so they are woven through the chapters of this book in myriad ways. Authors, artists, politicians, journalists, and citizens themselves struggled with defining what was called at the time “the American Way.” A near-­ constant self-­interrogation about the essential characteristics of Americans was driven in part by the sheer number of immigrants now embedded everywhere, serving as perpetual reminders that the questions mattered. In her groundbreaking book Inventing the “American Way,” historian Wendy Wall pinpoints the 1930s as a truly remarkable moment when there was, simultaneously, great fear of diversity and the most grandiose celebration of how diversity strengthens our union. We are defined by what we are not—­fascists, socialists, communists, antisemites, and fascists—­but coming up with what we are has been an overheated conversation that began in earnest in the 1930s. It was manifested in the thoughtful pondering of poets and novelists but also in the hateful rise of an American Nazi party and the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, losing ground during the Depression but having done its horrific, unforgettable damage in so many communities. As one reevaluates the 1930s yet again, with meanings of the “public” and “public opinion” as a motivator for study, the Americanism debate must be top of mind.18 The ninety years that have passed since the Great Depression have changed the nation; how could they not? Despite economic, political, technological, and cultural change on all dimensions, the 1930s are formative. A plethora of outstanding historical studies are the bedrock that made my own forays possible, and taken together, those many works make it clear that our archeological dig for the earliest, determining contours of “public opinion” leads directly back to the years of America’s greatest heartache.

Public Opinion: Toward a Sociology of Knowledge In the early decades of the twentieth century and up until the 1960s, historians engaged in what was then called “the history of ideas.” The approach was to locate a concept and then see how one elite writer after another (nearly always white men) took on the concept, reinterpreted it,

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Figure 1.3. A Hoover Village, 1931. One of the larger “Hoover Villages” was in Central Park in New York City. Cities and other urban localities tolerated the many clusters of groups of shanties because they had no means to shelter the huge number of homeless people. Photograph Credit: Alamy.

and built upon it, often over the centuries. This paradigm faded in the 1960s as historiography became more critical, more sophisticated, and importantly, more attuned to cultural context. As Sarah Maza puts it, historians realized the centrality of linking the “history of what” (e.g., a material thing, an idea) to the “history of who.”19 Historians studying ideas, whether they are scientific ideas or political ones, can only do so by going back and forth between an idea and the users of that idea, bringing in as many contemporaneous people, texts, and events as they can. Put another way, studying concepts—­like the “public” or “public opinion” in the case of this book—­demands an openness to whatever is going on at the moment. It means that a historian needs to look wherever there are people, going high (the president) and low (a citizen fairgoer, a radio listener). Quentin Skinner, a historian who guided his field toward culture, noted that there really are no definitions of political concepts: [Concepts] only have histories. But if they only have histories, then the only way to understand them is historically. . . . If only because, as Nietz­ sche says in a wonderful phrase, the concepts we have inherited―and

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the interpretations we place upon those concepts―are just frozen conflicts, the outcomes of ideological debate. We just get the views of the winners, so that historians always have to engage in an act of retrieval, trying to recover wider and missing structures of debate.20

And the “structures of debate” itself is the slew of actions, technologies, institutions, media, and people, high and low. In keeping with Nietzsche via Skinner, this book is not intended to trace or explicate particular attitudes and opinions on specific issues, policies, or candidates past, although one can’t help but find those in an era as rich as the 1930s. Issue opinions will come up, and they matter. Instead of tracking polling data or behavior on a select number of topics and disputes, mine is a broad, interdisciplinary argument about how we have come to view publics and their opinions in historical context. If concepts are “frozen conflicts,” it’s all more complex than tracing a concept from era to era, as somehow defined by elite writers. Instead we need to look at the conflicts and tensions themselves as they were poured into words and phrases. This approach is often labeled as “sociology of knowledge”—­the study of how ideas and concepts came to be and why.21 Studies in the sociology of knowledge link concepts to social structure—­our institutions, organizations, laws, leaders, and even our pastimes like sports, movies, and literature. To engage in these sorts of inquiry, linking the empirical world of everyday people to particular ideas, we need a variety of lenses and disciplines. That necessity places this book somewhere at the nexus of multiple academic fields—­political science, sociology, history, American cultural studies, and media analysis. There is no need to choose a field, at least in a study like this, and there are certainly many other ways to approach the archeology of an idea or a concept.22 Students in my classes through the decades unknowingly followed in the footsteps of an army of scholars past, hoping to find the perfect definition of “the public” and “public opinion”—­definitions that would be transhistorical and transnational. It certainly would be convenient to present, once and for all, tight definitions for these constructs that everyone could share. This exercise inevitably ends in frustration, whether in the hands of a talented graduate student or a sophisticated political theorist. As a result, in the study of the empirical world, researchers settle on definitions that make sense to them at a given moment in order to collect data and study important phenomena. This approach lets them proceed without getting tied up in theory and semantics. It is rational: How could there be a transhistorical meaning of anything? Terms are used by different people, in very different places, living in very different circumstances. For example, is public opinion the aggregation of many

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i­ndividual strangers’ opinions (as in the typical poll or survey)? Or is it best seen as the opinions of the educated or engaged, who will actually vote? Do all opinions, no matter how ignorant, ill-­informed, or irrational, matter to the formation of public policy? These are important inquiries, some of which I have pursued myself in past work, and all of them have been helpful in this project. In this book, however, I accept that when we use terms like “the public” or “public opinion” they are tied closely to the context of the era in which they are used, as messy as that context is. They are social constructions, like all concepts, and these happen to be two particularly fluid and fraught ones. My goal is to pin down the contours of public opinion meanings in the 1930s and to figure out what does and what does not endure in the troubled, polarized, and hypermediated year of 202123 Getting to this comparison, to see where it pays off for us, is a long road, demanding that we get intimate with the life and discourse of the Great Depression era. Another way to describe this interdisciplinary project: An entity called “the public” and its adjacent partner “public opinion” were notions, both poorly and confusedly, willed into existence in the 1930s. It was in this period that the public suddenly mattered in a way it never had, with multiple parties trying to press it into being for their varied purposes. While there are others, I take on several major forces here, with different philosophies and goals, as they tried to shape a public to their liking: President Roosevelt and his administration, the organizations that ignited the new industry of opinion polling, industrial giants and city fathers who hoped to shape a public open to innovation and ready for consumption, and a community of progressive educators fascinated by the promise of radio. I also take a quick foray into the burgeoning self-­help literature, the books Americans bought by the millions as they coped with fear or self-­loathing and clung to hope in extraordinary times. As I assess these different visions and practices of individuals, organizations, and companies, the central questions are always the same: How did these leaders and institutions try to will the public into existence for their purposes? What were the implications at the time, and how are the effects of their efforts imprinted on public opinion discourse and wrangling right now? Put yet another way, and my topic for the concluding chapter 7: What does the fierce battle over 1930s-­style meanings of, and tensions over, public opinion tell us about the development of popular sentiment itself as a central factor in our own democratic times? It was a contest then and is a contest now, with winners and losers. What I find by building case studies of the public-­shaping forces at work in the 1930s is that we inherit a largely deficient and worrisome set of meanings and expectations about public opinion. It was, as my book

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title indicates, a troubled birth. In the 1930s, as now to some extent, the public was seen as generally passive and trusting of political authority, fundamentally anti-­intellectual, malleable, powerfully distracted by amusement, and prone to fears of the most paranoid sorts. In the 1930s, various individuals and institutions—­with good and not-­so-­good intentions—­planted these particular seeds that grew into titanic trees. When we bemoan the low information levels of the public, the strange rejection of science, the sheer power of corporate authority, and the love of novelty and perversity in public life (that “wow” factor, when we are shocked and titillated), we see something of how it began. Donald Trump didn’t create the public of 2021, nor did the emergence of the internet shape our ideas about the public or our living reality of being part of it. It was mostly all there ninety years ago. There is an upside to all this 1930s-­based hand-­wringing. If we can explicate how public opinion was born in that era—­assumptions, agendas, and dynamics—­we will get closer to illuminating the tendencies, biases, and difficulties of understanding public opinion in our own fraught climate. In the 1930s, as now, despite the problematic nature of public life and the many self-­inflicted bad habits of citizenship, people in hard times inevitably sought hope and comfort about their communities, their nations, their lifestyles, the changing natural environment, and the future for their children. We do the same. Oddly, given our technological advances, we have clung pretty tightly to outmoded and even dangerous ideas about publics and their sentiments, ideas from the 1930s that chronically haunt us. And these notions about the public, as conceived during the Great Depression, close off other ways of thinking. The public seemingly waits to be queried by pollsters and market researchers, going about our watching and buying, knowing it will be noticed. Our screens know us so well, confidently showing us more products we might like off to the side, friendly reinforcements of who we are. We are cynical about overcoming dangerous division, typically bored by intellectual or scientific matters, and ever distracted by bread, circuses, and other cheerful ways (Hulu, TikTok, Instagram, gaming) to reduce the particular stresses of daily life, from fears of COVID-­19 to the normal struggles we had before a pandemic. This is not to say that political leaders, corporations, pundits, or activists all had or have, in the 1930s or today, evil or conspiratorial intent and are at present trying to distract us digitally. Some have dangerously selfish motives for sure. Putting aside the megalomaniacs and the greedy, most of the actors back then were simply fighting for their agendas, persuading voters toward policy positions, trying to attract consumers to make money, or pursuing all those goals simultaneously. In cases like the early pollsters, for example, the goal was

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to establish profitable businesses but also—­genuinely—­to provide a “service” of the loftiest democratic sort. They really did believe in it, if their contemporaries are to be believed and in my reading of polling history. Surveying was for them a tool of democracy and self-­government, and a lucrative one for some at least. Taken together, the driving forces of the 1930s built the essential outlines of the American public sphere and gave us frameworks for thinking about ourselves. In the end, this constellation of beliefs constantly interrupts the evolution of our own democracy if we thought we were on a linear—­if bumpy—­road to a better form of it. A close look at the 1930s tells us what we are and, equally important, what we are not in most cases: a tolerant, engaged, thinking, and critical public. I posit that we have just the opposite of that today: a public that is still blown around like a feather by professional persuaders, social media warriors, leaders who speak without evidence, and those who would have us think that nothing is really true at all. A successful democracy is supposed to keep getting better, richer, and more effective. And it advances through the ambitious, rational, and clearheaded involvement of the people. While continuing evolution of our democratic “experiment” was the dream, America’s founders were openly anxious about the public and public opinion in the ongoing future of the new nation. Were we, the people, actually up to it? Along with their fierce belief in democracy and recognition of public opinion, their basic trust in the people’s competence for self-­rule was fragile. They had so many doubts. George Washington, for example, famously warned against the gravitational pulls of factionalization and division, arguing that warring parties could easily interrupt the path to stable democracy. For Thomas Jefferson, virtuous self-­government and enduring good government were reliant on institutions of education (hence, his practical tracts on the subject and his efforts to establish the University of Virginia). In any case, pivotal to all the varied visions at our founding were rationality and moderation, a unified nation, liberty, and equality (in theory), and that even human temperament Washington both modeled and endorsed.24 To my mind, the way the public and public opinion were conceptualized in the 1930s—­without question the birthplace of the modern public—­is what constrains and damages the American democratic process here in 2021. The brands of populism that emerged in the 1930s, the rampant anti-­intellectualism, race hatred, anxieties about class, misogyny, the rise of powerful media, and the consumer desires of the period, all shape the seemingly pliant and confused United States of today. This is not to say that Americans are all greedy or stupid. But they are open to certain kinds of leadership, persuasion, and management in ways that the Founding Fathers predicted and in so many other ways they did not.

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It seems a dark picture, and it is, to some extent. Here we will grapple with what is possible, given the roots of our contemporary view of public opinion gleaned from an immersion in the 1930s. There are ways to climb out of negativity, some harder and some easier. Assumptions about the nature of the public are difficult to get past, but in a new era with different obstacles, progress is at least possible if we recognize essential challenges.

The Chronic Curse of Anti-­i ntellectualism As I argue through the cases in this book, the birth of a “public” and of an entity called “public opinion” most certainly emerged—­in a modern sense—­during the Depression years. Individuals were hopeful or hopeless, alternating between the two, but there is no question that the collective will was miserable, dejected, and passive in light of the problems largely out of their control. Of course, there were many people navigating the Depression’s effects while also being victimized by race hatred and discrimination. Some painful aspects of my narrative in this book come with the analysis of mass-­ produced culture—­what entertained us in the 1930s. In broad strokes, it was fun, especially for the privileged. It was also racially repulsive, and rabidly anti-­intellectual. Many apparently didn’t mind the daunting intensity of predudice if it was framed happily (e.g., Amos ‘n’ Andy). And as far as anti-­intellectualism, one must only remember that the “Scopes Monkey Trial” (State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes)—­the widely covered challenge to a state law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools—­took place in 1925, with fierce antievolution debates continuing across state legislatures and courts into the 1930s. The trial and surrounding controversy illustrated an American divide about science and discovery that continues today, albeit in very different forms (e.g., antivaccine movements or climate change denial). Of all the tracts on anti-­intellectualism, antiscience sentiment, and skepticism of education in the United States, the most important work is still Hofstadter’s magnificent 1962 book Anti-­intellectualism in American Life.25 Hofstadter, a Pulitzer Prize–­winning historian who suffered an untimely death in 1970, spent his career tracing the nature of politics and culture. He has been a key narrator of so many American stories: conspiratorial thinking (as mentioned above), the evolution of agrarianism, the rise of populism, and dangerous attempts to dictate morality from the eighteenth century to the Cold War. Anti-­intellectualism in American Life is an incisive attempt to trace the uncomfortable national tensions between science and religion, learning and ignorance, country folkways of think-

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ing, and urban, elite mentalities. Hofstadter provides a kind of roadmap for thinking about the ways that anti-­intellectualism evolved in different eras, right up until the election of John F. Kennedy as president. His analysis of the 1920s and 1930s is of great interest here, as he illustrates how the powerful evangelical Protestantism of the period became joined with right-­wing populism in a mighty brew of antiscientific, anti-­education thinking that is still with us. He outlines the foundations for contemporary forms of populism such as the Tea Party, which emerged with vigor during the Barack Obama administration, and the various groups roused by Donald Trump.26 While there has not been a scholar of his talents focused on the long evolution of anti-­intellectualism since Hofstadter, he inspired many, myself included. In this book, I revisit anti-­intellectualism as a particular type of American inclination, one that manifests itself deeply in the very notion of “the public.” I argue throughout the chapters that follow that pollsters, corporations, and political leaders consciously and unconsciously drew on what they believed was a fundamental lack of curiosity, shrewdness, and anything too cerebral as they polled, persuaded the public, built industries for the mass manufacture of consumer goods, created radio programs, and established the popular World’s Fairs of the 1930s. Just as notions of an American public and public opinion were becoming concrete during this period, there was an assumption that the public mind was lifeless, disinterested, and possessed little sustained interest in science, art, nature, medicine, or the law. There wasn’t much conspiracy in all this. Instead, we have a variety of political and social actors and institutions going about their business, but all the while creating or simply reinforcing notions that the public is simply not a knowledge-­seeking body. Far from it, Americans prefer entertainment and information that suits their existing mind-­sets, not stimuli that challenge, make them uncomfortable, or might fly in the face of their religious beliefs, community norms, or general habits of thinking. This is only one aspect of the troubling birth of public opinion in the 1930s, but I introduce it here early, before the empirical work of later chapters, because it is such a powerful aspect of that era still with us so palpably. Anti-­intellectualism takes a variety of forms—­the endless desire for outrageous public characters who lie baldly, the massive popularity of social media platforms full of worthless memes and rumor, a driving need for the novel, a hope for a “blow it all up” messenger—­anything that might relieve our apparent mass boredom or at least keep our minds busy in a physician waiting room or restaurant line. We hope to be engaged, and a large sector of the nation gets carried away with the entertainment value or sheer comfort of fun, dreams, and sometimes magical thinking.

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Figure 1.4. Drought. Jacob Kainen’s wonderful 1935 lithograph was supported by the Federal Art Project, a New Deal program designed to put artists to work. The program was also founded to document the ravages of the Depression through varied media beyond photographs—­murals, paintings, drawings, statuary, and performances. Courtesy of the Jacob Kainen Art Trust/HEMPHILL Artworks.

These phenomena are difficult to trace, multifaceted, and generally hard to pin down. Studying earlier forms of anti-­intellectualism gives us historical context, helps us interpret their current forms, and enables us think more productively about the future of our politics.27 And of course, in its ultimate form, anti-­intellectualism is part of the deadly concoction that leads to the outright denial of truth. We saw plenty of it in the 1930s, albeit most clearly in Nazi Germany, where the fight against truth was systematic, sophisticated, and highly effective. And today we see wildly successful denials of truths daily, on the internet, in cable news programming, and in the rhetoric of a former president, US senators, and congressmen. Writing in the early days of January 2021, just after the violent mob stormed the US Capitol, historian Tim Synder wrote: “Post-­ truth is pre-­facism, and Trump has been our post-­truth president. . . . Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves.”28

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Expanding Our Methods Using the 1930s for historical perspective and also as an aperture for understanding contemporary public opinion dynamics are two substantive goals of this book. Another aim is to broaden our methods and approaches to studying mass opinion and its nature. While historians have long studied popular culture artifacts to piece together the nature of their chosen periods and populations, those of us working in the interdisciplinary area of public opinion research have typically not evaluated popular culture. In general, scholars who study public opinion in modern political science have been less drawn to the analysis of fiction, movies, music, television shows, festivals, strikes, demonstrations, and the other manifestations of public opinion that historians have always found to be essential sources of data about a public, its perspectives, and its anxieties. Realizing this problem, the sociologist Charles Tilly urged anyone who studies public opinion to accept that all public activity matters, and that—­no matter how difficult to track—­it is evidence of how people think and feel.29 Like our current era, the 1930s were alive with new forms and genres in film, music, and over the airwaves of radio, which was everywhere: by 1940 the large majority of Americans owned a radio and all others could listen in barber shops, bars, lodges, clubs, and on the street.30 I take up the question of how radio shaped publics in the 1930s but also explore the in-­person spectacles that so captured the imagination, here and abroad. With regard to the latter—­the events built for crowds at locales—­I focus on a magnificent example: the 1939 New York World’s Fair, the second costliest fair ever. The fair has not been seen by scholars of public opinion as an item for study, but if they did come upon it, most would realize it is not simply left to cultural historians. It is a rich text for understanding politics and popular sentiment in the 1930s. As with the massive Chicago World’s Fair six years prior, the New York fair was a nexus of pretty much every aspect of American life, culture, and politics. I can only evaluate some key aspects of the fair as they intersect with the themes of this book, but like mass media content and the major events of today (televised or not), the fair tells us so much about the public. The notion of using popular media or events as telling “texts” about the public itself might seem uncontroversial. But in my experience, students of public opinion often avoid these artifacts of culture in favor of polling and surveying because study of popular culture tends to open up such difficult questions, and we don’t have familiar tools to answer them. Popular books, movies, or the conversations on Facebook pages are by nature cluttered and hard to interpret. Yet they are telling, rewarding, and ultimately, I believe, predictive. In a world where polls so often fail us

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and seem beside the point, and where Americans’ worlds are shaped by the mesmerizing entertainment on their screens, we need to shift gears toward culture in a far more serious way than we ever have. An example of these tensions is found in academe. Philip Converse, for decades one of the most distinguished leaders in the area of public opinion research, argued that broader, more socioculturally based ways of thinking about public opinion were simply impractical and, therefore, losing approaches. He was far from anti-­intellectual, and indeed he was one of the more important social scientists of the twentieth century. But Converse was intent on the urgent practicalities of measurement. It is good to be narrow, he insisted, and chew off small quantitative, “scientific” bites, to understand publics and their opinions. Looking back on the history of polling and surveying, and dismissing a prominent critic of polling, Converse wrote in 1987 that using science to understand the public suggests “that we proceed in small steps, decomposing the total process into more manageable parts, learning how to achieve some quantitative mastery over them, and only then beginning to recompose the whole.”31 Recent years have proven Converse’s confidence in measurement through small “parts” far too limiting. To take our contemporary moment: We had bodies of public opinion data—­generated by sophisticated professional pollsters conversant in the best academic methods—­before the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020. These data are not worthless, and we learned much about the campaign and election results that brought Donald Trump into office and threw him out. But it is indisputable that this immense amount of data failed to predict a variety of election outcomes, and much more importantly, did not capture the undercurrents of populism and culture that drove the election of Trump, his continued support, and the eventual storming of our Capitol. Saying that his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote is a lame way out: 63 million Americans voted for Trump that year, and over 74 million voted for him in 2020. In retrospect we’ve begun to see how it all occurred. It surely would have been instructive, though, if we had studied the underlying dynamics long before the elections: deeply held grievances and frustrations of so many Americans, resentment of liberals’ sensibilities and ideas, fear of minorities, opposition to sexual fluidity, suspicions of immigrants, and the like. These are hard to measure and they are not understood easily through polling. Put even more pointedly, although painful for political communication scholars like me to admit, it might have been more helpful to have studied (closely) the many appeals of The Apprentice, popular television programming in general, the content of fashionable right-­wing websites, the nature of Rush Limbaugh’s shows and audience, and the distinct enjoy-

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ment and utility of Fox News for so many Americans—­all fluid, nebulous, and therefore annoying subjects for study, simply because they keep evolving and reinventing themselves on the fly. It’s hard to measure the moving target of media content and its appeals in sophisticated fashion. Difficult as it is, though, understanding them would have been predictive in ways that all of our polls and surveys simply were not. Political science and public opinion research didn’t only fail to predict and describe the currents of politics in recent years: many scholars dismissed or ignored popular culture (e.g., reality shows), which held so many profound answers about race, misogyny, our values, and what gives people pleasure. Many still dismiss popular culture despite the lessons of 2016 and 2020, and they do so at their own peril. Historians are cautious about prediction in a way that political scientists are not, but they know a thing or two about taking dives into the incoherence of the past, to excavate what might point to the future.

The Chapters Ahead In the chapters that follow, the goal is to demonstrate how different people and institutions tried to will public opinion into existence for their distinct purposes. Once we understand the how and the why, we can ask what it all might mean for democratic practice now. Chapter 2 begins with one force that defined the public and its nature in the 1930s: Franklin Roosevelt’s persuasion. He is of course one of our best-­studied presidents, and so I briefly home in on the emerging nature of the public during the critical period between Roosevelt’s ascension to the presidency in 1932 and the end of the decade, before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Roosevelt is key to the 1930s, and so are his conceptions of the public. We need them in order to set the table a bit before turning to less well-­studied actors and institutions. For example, he was the first president to rely in part on polling data and even had his own pollster in the White House, Emil Hurja. Putting aside the newfangled opinion poll, he had the nature of the public itself on his mind always: how people express opinions, how to evaluate popular sentiment, and how to move it. I do not isolate the well-­studied “fireside chats” but instead focus on conversations with the press and speeches to varied, particular audiences, where he calls out public opinion as concept. Roosevelt, while doing work he believed to be critical for the nation, was also clumsily feeling his way through the complexities of trying, himself, to form or create a coherent public—­a public in theory and in practice. He was not one to reveal all of his thoughts and was an enigma even to many of the men and women in the White House who knew him best

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and saw him daily. In any case, for chapter 2 I have the gift of numerous memoirs by his colleagues as well as decades of outstanding biographies to lean on. It is not glib to say that Franklin Roosevelt was, in fact, a theorist of public opinion. He certainly did not lay his views out as such, ever call himself a theorist, or even claim to be an intellectual for that matter. Yet a thoroughgoing framework for popular opinion was one of his obsessions: How to understand the public sentiment, shape it, inoculate it, sway it, and in general, make it work for the New Deal programs, and later, the sacrifices needed for a comprehensive war effort. Roosevelt attempted to will public opinion into existence as he needed to, and in a sophisticated, fluid way, he created a compelling vision of the public in different fashions at different times, for different purposes. He was catholic with regard to the meaning and measure of the popular sentiment: Public opinion was the aggregated beliefs of individuals, as represented by vote totals, polls, the tabulated opinions of elites (e.g., the “Clergy Letters” his administration solicited from thousands of holy men across the country), and the size of the radio audience listening to him (and others). Public opinion was not simply found through aggregation, though. Public opinion was to be discerned just as helpfully, sometimes more so, through newspaper content, magazine investigations, and even the views of his neighbors in his beloved Hyde Park.32 Most important, Roosevelt saw the public and public opinion as his, constantly wresting it away from demagogues like Huey Long, members of Congress, newspaper publishers, and many lesser actors. Roosevelt said, in his oft-­quoted 1932 remark: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”33 That was how he saw the particular social and economic programs he introduced. For our purposes here, we extend the notion of this trial-­and-­error mind-­set: His experimentation was also constant in the construction, assessment, and persuasion of public opinion. Did Roosevelt help concretize the shape of the public for decades to come, including our own? He did, but in far more nuanced ways than simply delivering powerful fireside chats, masterful though they were. In chapter 3 I turn to the nascent public opinion industry, defined as the tiny handful of pollsters who led efforts to popularize the sample survey, or “scientific” poll. While people had counted and aggregated public opinion since biblical times, these counts were normally straw polls or census operations conducted for myriad reasons. You counted all the people who mattered. An example is the straw polling American

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journalists used in the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth as they queried travelers in train cars about their preferences in upcoming presidential elections. Journalists were, of course, trying to get a sense of candidate electoral strength in different regions, but also, critically, to sell newspapers. Then, as now, the public was interested in itself—­how their neighbors or people of their region intended to vote.34 Our distinctly American fascination with the opinions of others predated the new pollsters of the 1930s and 1940s by many decades. As opposed to straw votes and censuses, sampling—­surveying a representative group of individuals in order to extrapolate to a larger population—­was first applied in the 1930s, most boldly and importantly by George Gallup. Others, like Archibald Crossley and Elmo Roper, were pioneers as well, up to the same general predictive tasks. Some focused on politics, others primarily on consumer goods and market behavior, and often on both. It was difficult then, as now, for even the most successful political pollsters to make money concentrating only on election seasons. As a result, in the 1930s nearly all of the major polling organizations devoted significant time to their clients in various industries, trying to map consumer preferences and buying behavior in order to sell products successfully to Americans. Hence, political polling and market research have always been conflated, sharing many of the same pioneers, techniques, journals, and professional organizations. Intensive new efforts to poll in the 1930s seemed a good fit to an expanding democratic polity: America was changing so quickly that it needed explaining. There were so many waves of immigrants who by the 1930s had built mature communities, tastes in consumer goods were changing due to the boom in manufacturing during the 1920s, and our entanglements around the world for trade and alliances were fluid. What did it all add up to, and what did it mean for the average American? The surveyors, with Gallup so often out front as a flamboyant and effective advocate, saw their role in far more exalted terms than just providing interesting information to people about people. They argued that polling was a critical service to the nation, a profoundly important tool of popular sovereignty itself. As Gallup wrote in his book with Saul Rae, The Pulse of Democracy, polling would finally give policy makers the precise, scientific evidence they sought, once and for all, about popular sentiment: For the first time in democratic history . . . continuous surveys of what America thinks are enabling us to collect the facts about public opinion. Public-­opinion research provides an objective week-­to-­week description of the values to which the people hold, and the prejudices and attitudes which they have formed out of their own experiences. . . . Their judgments

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on hundreds of recent social, political, and economic issues are on file for all to examine and to evaluate.35

Putting aside Gallup’s rather remarkable claims throughout his life about the accuracy and exactitude of measurement by poll (both predicting election outcomes and as a way to capture the common person’s issue views with certainty), early pollsters were doing more than measuring: They were attempting to define public opinion itself. The constant rhetorical pounding—­not only by Gallup—­of aggregation as the single most effective way to measure public opinion had profound effects on politics, journalism, academe, business, culture, and the American imagination for decades to follow. While suspicions about the usefulness of polls abound these days, especially given the growth of social media as the new landscape for expressing opinion, it is fair to say that aggregation-­oriented approaches to public opinion have been dominant—­indeed, hegemonic—­since the 1930s.36 I review the evolution of polling briefly, then focus more intently on how pollsters viewed the public and its opinions in the context of the Depression era. I examine nearly all issue polls conducted by mainstream survey researchers from 1930 to 1940 to get a sense of what was asked and how all of this data—­the questions, not the answers—­worked to form particular ideas about the public and public opinion during this critical era. The pollsters were out to collect data, to build reputations and authority, and to make money. While they pursued their goals, they shaped notions of the public then and now, much like Roosevelt, an avid consumer of their data. Importantly, the pollsters stuck only a very small toe into the emotionally fraught waters of race and ethnicity. In Gallup’s most vehement tract on the profound importance of polling to democracy, he doesn’t mention immigration, race, or ethnicity much. His chapter “Upsetting Some Taboos” in The Pulse of Democracy was about polling on syphilis and venereal diseases, not about race discrimination. While one gets the distinct sense that pollsters would rather have ignored race matters, they were forced to investigate a bit. The few resulting questions, asked by both Gallup and Roper organizations, were clumsy, interesting, and dangerous. They are worth our attention now as we write our own chapter on immigration, race, and discrimination here in 2021. It is not a coincidence that George Gallup and other pollsters emerged and gained significant acclaim for their firms during this period because there was so much to try and understand and so many actors with wildly different motivations willing to pay for such data. From the president of the United States to news outlets and manufacturing giants, the new method for gauging public attitudes was a key tool to persuasion, manipu-

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lation, and certainty at a time when the nation was in a profound economic distress and political upheaval. That polling exploded onto the scene in what was the Great Depression and the interwar period makes tremendous sense, as we puzzled over our place in the world. Chapter 4 comes at the matter of publics and public sentiment from a much different direction: the haphazard origins of “infotainment.” Infotainment may be a broad, overused term, but it is difficult to do better when trying to analyze the infusion of fun and play into the transmission of political ideas as well as the evolution of public opinion. In Western civilization, infotainment began in the theaters of Ancient Greece, where information, knowledge, opinions, and philosophical approaches were often tightly interwoven with stage plays and the rhetorical arts more generally. Infotainment started there and became a natural practice for artists, poets, and performers throughout the centuries and across continents. However, few could argue with the notion that America took it to extremes. Even when ideas emerge from other nations, we tend to do things on a grand, over-­the-­top scale, as is our way. In this chapter I take up World’s Fairs, often called world “exhibitions.” They have thankfully been studied by a variety of talented cultural historians, art historians, and experts in the evolution of public architecture. We are now overdue in giving them the attention they deserve from students of public opinion, given their magnitude and impacts. The 1930s may have been known as the Golden Age of Radio, but it was also the golden age of fairs, hence historians of these events focus with vigor on how cities put on these monstrous undertakings in Chicago (1933–­1934), San Francisco (1939–­1940), and New York (1939–­1940). Fairs on a massive scale first appeared in the mid-­nineteenth century to entertain all who attended, but also to teach fairgoers about other nations, culture, science, and innovation. The most famous and successful of the earliest fairs was held at the newly built spectacular Crystal Palace in London in 1851 and was called the “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations.” At this event, and the ones that followed both in Europe and North America, countries displayed their innovations and demonstrated their cultural traditions. Inventors, and eventually companies and giant corporations, established booths to educate. In the twentieth century, the fairs helped establish consumer culture, create demand for new products, and show us (in style) how products would make our lives pleasant, efficient, and exciting. The first televisions were introduced at the 1939 World’s Fair, and FDR was the first president to speak on television as he opened the fair. So much hardship was felt in the 1930s, but right alongside it, these spectacular fairs were built as beacons of imagination and joyful (if often

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bizarre) celebrations of the human spirit and diversity of the human race. They certainly were not just midways full of rides and booths: General Motors, the Ford Motor Company, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Eastman Kodak, General Electric, Westinghouse Electric, and the day’s other industrial giants created elaborate exhibits for visitors to see both their wares and simulations of their own futures. The Chicago World’s Fair’s theme in 1933–­1934 was “A Century of Progress,” looking back and ahead, but the 1939–­1940 fair was even more aggressively about the future, with the theme “The World of Tomorrow.” Attendance was strong in Chicago and New York, although the former made money and the latter ended in serious debt. In any case, many people experienced the fairs, and newspapers across the country covered all aspects of the events closely. There were almost 40 million paid admissions to the Chicago fairs over two summers and around 45 million paid admissions of Americans and foreign visitors passing through the gates at Corona Park, New York City, during the two summers of that fair. The ripple effects made the impacts of the fairs even more immense, as visitors from far away reported back to their hometowns, armed with souvenirs, products, photographs, and most important, tales of an exciting new consumer-­centered world to come. Tensions at the New York fair were emblematic of a struggle to define public opinion in the 1930s, with fierce arguments over the public’s interest (or disinterest) in science, consumerism, and entertainment. Did science exist in order to discover, wherever that might lead, or was its primary goal to make our lives more comfortable through televisions, appliances, automobiles, and gorgeously efficient homes? Beneath the bread (many new foods were introduced), circuses (every act one could hope for, in water and on land), amusements (games, contests, “freaks”), and a constant stream of nude and nearly nude women, the New York fair is a revealing text about the American people—­how they learned, what they bought, how they acted, and what they cared about. Both the Chicago and the New York World’s Fairs were established to show off these cities and bring business, and while those purposes were served, the fairs also became a battleground about the nature and future of science education, intellectualism, and what constitutes entertainment for Americans. And all the contestation happened in a context of race, gender, and ethnic prejudices as well as labor strife. The fairs were confusing and self-­ contradictory in ways that mirrored the sheer commotion of the decade itself. Fairs presented a jumble of economic anxieties, fears of coming war, and tension over what it was to be an American public in the twentieth century. What does a massive fair in New York City have to do with Roosevelt or pollsters? Everything. Polling was used during the fair to get a sense

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of public likes and dislikes, ticketing ease and acceptable price points, transportation, dining, and much else. And Roosevelt, as well as his wife and administration, had great interest in the political messages that fairs could deliver for the New Deal. The president saw the fair not merely as another symbol of public cohesion, perfectly in balance with his many other attempts to make us feel as one body. He viewed the event as a tool, a mechanism for the unified public he hoped to create. As he spoke to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, organizers, and attendees on April 30, 1939, to open the fair, he said: The United States stands today as a completely homogeneous nation, similar in its civilization from Coast to Coast and from North to South, united in a common purpose to work for the greatest good of the greatest number, united in the desire to move forward to better things in the use of its great resources of nature and its even greater resources of intelligent, educated manhood and womanhood, and united in its desire to encourage peace and good will among all the nations of the earth. Born of that unity of purpose, that knowledge of strength, that singleness of ideal, two great Expositions, one at each end of our Continent, mark this year in which we live. And it is fitting that they commemorate the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the birth of our permanent Government.37

A “completely homogenous nation” was about as fantastical a phrase as could be chosen to describe the American public. But it fit well with Roosevelt’s imagined public and public opinion, and what better place to underscore it? Political vision, upbeat and inspiring, was central to the fair, an early fusion of infotainment that the administration in Washington kept a close eye on over its two-­year run. That the fair itself actually mirrored a fractured nation—­the race hatred, labor unrest, and objectification of immigrants, women, and others—­was masked by high-­minded rhetoric. The fair was great fun and also an imaginative papering-­over of worrisome cleavages, both crystal clear and far more murky. No proper book about America in the 1930s can ignore radio, the subject of chapter 5. It swept us up through its intimacy, its excitement, and its stunning ability to bring us pleasure. Radio was used effectively for political purposes by President Roosevelt, Father Coughlin, Huey Long, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and many other actors across many nations. That said, almost all programming was dominated not by news or by political talk, but by music, comedy, talent shows, soap operas, and dramatic tales.38 Even more influential than film due to its constant presence, radio was the overwhelmingly powerful force shaping the

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collective imagination. And how broadcasters and corporate sponsors of radio saw the American public matters almost as much as anything FDR did or said. Radio in the 1930s—­a broad infotainment source even more valuable to FDR than massive events like the World’s Fairs—­had penetrated the living rooms of most Americans, with 83 percent owning at least one radio set by 1940.39 Newspaper readership was still high, and radio did not replace that key news source. It was far different in nature and would evolve into a powerful force on its own novel terms. Radio’s magic, its captivating, effervescent joy, was everywhere: If one didn’t listen at home, one listened in bars, in schools, in stores, at churches and lodges, on the street, on front porches, and wherever people gathered. During the war it was essential for promoting our military efforts abroad, explaining the progress of troops, and spreading the news, with so many fathers, sons, and daughters fighting in far-­off places. In the years before Pearl Harbor, when radio reported terrifying drama of a distant war, it was just as vital, even if our own struggles were domestic and economic. Radio itself—­the programming and our attachment to it—­was an American expression of freedom all its own, depicted everywhere from Norman Rockwell’s imaginary constructions of daily life to the hit movies of the period. Films of the period relied on radio incessantly as a mechanism for plot lines and twists. For example, the plots of those two enormously successful Capra films mentioned previously— Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe—­ relied on broadcasting and its unquestioned authority in our lives. Conveniently for us, some ninety years after radio’s rapid diffusion, the Roosevelt administration—­prompted by a few outspoken and ambitious teachers—­promoted radio for much more than presidential speeches and bland government announcements. Chapter 5 is a study of how proponents of “intercultural education,” FDR’s newly formed education agency, and the Columbia Broadcasting System came together to create and broadcast a half-­hour Sunday afternoon show called Americans All—­Immigrants All. The program was carried by hundreds of local radio stations across the nation, and it was meant to describe immigrant and minority groups as well as their “gifts” to the United States. The show focused on contributions to the arts, science, medicine, manufacturing, and other areas of American endeavor, highlighting the particular fields of industry that immigrants and their children built (e.g., the Greeks and the sponge industry in Tarpon Springs, Florida, or Scandinavians and cheese-­making in the upper Midwest). For a variety of reasons, and to the hopes and dismay of many, there were also episodes on the Jews as an ethnicity (not a religion) and on African Americans. The episodes about “Negroes” were

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especially complicated because they were hardly immigrants in the usual sense of that word. Americans All—­Immigrants All was well-­meaning, a progressive project meant to smooth the way for the acceptance of immigrants, second-­ generation Americans of various ethnic backgrounds, and racial minorities. It was successful and is a treasure with regard to what it tells us about the public, public opinion, and the definition of who is an American. Only a few historians have evaluated the program’s birth and implementation. I rely on their good work and use it as a foundation to evaluate the program anew as a text about the meaning of “the public” in the 1930s. That it has been overlooked by students of public opinion is a surprise, given that it was the first major national broadcast about race and ethnicity ever attempted in the United States, one that stretched out in weekly episodes across half a year. The first chapters all focus on Nietzsche’s “frozen conflicts” over the making and meaning of public opinion, asking how and why different parties—­FDR, the pollsters, World’s Fair organizers, city fathers, progressive educators, and media companies—­argued implicitly or explicitly for their own constructions of a public and its sentiments. My goal is to come at these shifting constructions—­the way we infuse a concept with meaning through speech and culture—­from different angles that all represent central persuaders of the day. Chapter 6 is less a chapter than an intermission or interlude. It is not a study but more a provocation, necessary in a book about the nature of a public defined in the 1930s. The hardships, the prejudice, the struggles, and the anxieties have lived alongside fairs, sports, broadcast entertainment, entrepreneurship, and inspiring Horatio Alger–­type rags-­to-­riches stories. The latter were all present in the 1930s—­ways to blow off steam, to laugh, to play, and to hope for the kind of success that would make life better and easier. One under-­studied place to look for this sort of optimism, embedded in the nature of public opinion during what was a largely bleak, fragile period, is in what we read. Movies brought in the crowds, radio was a noisy member of the family, but there is yet more data for us neatly contained in the best-­selling nonfiction books of the period. Some of the most popular nonfiction books underscored the hopefulness deep in the American creed—­the fundamental ambitions, pioneering spirit, friendliness, and downright peppiness that often characterizes us. In this chapter I take a brief look at popular tracts that spoke to individual aspiration and relaxation. These books were in direct dialogue with the Great Depression itself and were meant to uplift the individual while also inserting a more optimistic dimension into the very notion of “the public.”

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Most of the books of the period, while wildly popular and influential back then, are largely unknown today. An example is a book on how to relax by an erudite professor at the University of Chicago. Others endure with force, most prominently Dale Carnegie’s 1936 How to Win Friends and Influence People. Taken together, these books—­some meant for men, some for women, some for everyone—­were the beginning of what would become the “self-­help” movement in the United States. It is as strong as ever these days, whether embodied in Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness empire, the various exercise crusades (Pilates, the science-­based seven-­minute workout), meditation, or the lasting international success of Alcoholics Anonymous, which began in the 1930s with the introduction of the “Twelve Steps.”40 What does the early self-­help movement have to do with our ideas about the public? If we are interested in the evolving meaning of the public and its sentiments, looking to popular culture’s directives to the public seems critical. With respect to Dr. Gallup and the early pollsters, people are not consumptive automatons, working, playing, and opining on command to survey researchers. Our opinions are forever tied up in interests and pastimes that keep us engaged with life. This connection between political opinions and play or opinions and the more spiritual side of life isn’t something you can measure easily, but we must assess it, especially when there is an explosion of a paradigm like self-­help. That so many books sold well is indicative that the writers not only struck a chord but took the idea of American agency to new levels. Self-­help systems were a kind of do-­it-­yourself, nondenominational religion or ideology that could be practiced by anyone anywhere, hence its attraction. In exploring both the 1930s fairs and the self-­help literature, we are privy to what the literary critic Raymond Williams has called “structures of feeling.” These are affective tones and currents one finds in a particular period. It is the emotional coherence, the shared feeling of living in a particular period among the same jumble of stimuli around us—­political, cultural, and emotional. The idea of such a “structure” was left vague by Williams but has been pondered by theorists across disciplines since he wrote decades ago. An American example of a period closer to us than the 1930s is the late 1960s and early 1970s, a set of years with its own layers of affect shaped by politics, social justice movements, war, and music. There was a sensibility to the period, hard to wrap one’s head around, but distinctive without question. The 1930s had such sensibilities as well, and as we advance to chapters about the people, events, and arts of the period, we need to keep emotions, values, and their expression at the fore where we can. Whether we experience joy or intense fear, as Ira Katznelson so beautifully described in his work on the Depression, the

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felt experience of a decade is never to be overlooked. It appears in seemingly idiosyncratic places, but patterns are patterns, and the stunning popularity of self-­help tracts help us understand the convoluted tensions in constructing public opinion of a profoundly important era.41

So What? This is the query of chapter 7, which collates the wildly different elements of public life and feeling in the 1930s. I answer the “So what?” question, pulling together evidence and ideas from previous chapters, but also try my hand at steps forward. Some of the ways we can break from the more destructive parts of our history have been outlined by others, and I review those while offering observations from my immersion in polling, media, pedagogy, and presidential persuasion during the Depression years. We will never settle on a transhistorical meaning of “public opinion,” and we will always struggle to understand the nature of popular sentiment in our day. In our present circumstance we need more institutions to step up and help improve our political discourse. We can encourage this despite the anti-­intellectualism, conspiratorial thinking, battles over truth, and dangers to democracy from so many corners that we inherit from the 1930s and other eras. In the closing pages of the chapter I focus on how three actors on the national stage—­educators (K–­12 and university-­level), journalists, and industrial giants might lead. The latter two groups were powerful in the 1930s while educators were less so, but these days teachers can have far more influence on national dialogues because they can use the internet to publish their ideas and even entire curricula. They no longer need to battle for radio programming time with television networks or congressional committees. Most of this work can be done within the confines of their organizational constraints, while journalists and CEOs generally have even more freedom to make change. I am keenly aware that few K–­12 teachers or journalists can implement my ideas in the form presented, but I try to be as specific as I can about direction and give examples of fine existing work that might be replicated or expanded.

* America talks about itself ad nauseam these days—­what it is, who is at its patriotic core, how it is divided, and what it hopes to be or not be. There was much of this sort of dialogue in the 1930s as well as we navigated and then rejected communism, socialism, and fascism as ruling ideas fitting for us. Many questioned our entertainments too: Was radio destructive

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to politics? Had it gotten out of our control somehow, run primarily by magnates out to make a buck? Was it hurting our children? And the essence of being “an American public” weighed heavily on us in the face of a wretched economy and a new, worrisome role in a troubled world order. The urge to question and reinvent ourselves and our nation never ends, but while we try things on for size and look to the future, we have only the past as our sole imperfect guide. At least in regard to the study of public opinion, we have immense opportunity if we open ourselves up to taking cultural history seriously. We tend to despair in the closing chapters of our scholarly books about the effective representation of public opinion and its fundamental quality. On the former, it is more than clear that we need an overhaul of the Electoral College, the elimination of gerrymandering, the regulation of dangerous antidemocratic social media platforms, and much more. We can’t lose sight of these vital discussions, even if they spur fierce fights about constitutional amendments or spark major battles in statehouses. To give up on the big fixes would be to give up on the American experiment, one that is supposed to build better governance. To my mind, though, it is also our responsibility to provide concrete, practical ways forward that might—­right now and without legislative or constitutional changes —­improve the quality and reporting of public opinion. As elusive as “public opinion” will always be, the more we think about its origins, expressions, tendencies, and potential, the better we position ourselves for a civil, inclusive democratic future.

2 * President in the Maelstrom

F DR a s P u b l i c Op i n i o n Th e o r i s t

A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, 1922

Newly elected president Franklin Roosevelt inherited a nation in distress and knew full well that communicating to the people would be as vital as any course change in public policy. Pulling America out of a cataclysmic economic downturn would take nation-­shaking turns in the direction and scale of federal government action. It would demand an entirely novel White House communication paradigm. Roosevelt’s rhetorical efforts remade the nation in lasting ways, but he remade both himself and the office of the presidency all the while. The content of his rhetoric and his tone on particular issues—­from bank holidays and Supreme Court composition to many New Deal programs—­matter immensely. Less explored is the “sociology of knowledge” question: how he reconfigured our very notions of “the public” and “public opinion.” I argue here that those particular reconfigurations—­the meanings associated with such foundational concepts—­are among the more profound, lasting remnants of his communications to the nation. All presidents, as well as the institution of the presidency, evolve because public roles are shaped so dramatically by their times. The 1930s were without question among the most fraught years for the American chief executive. The nature and gravity of the Great Depression had become evident to all people, no matter where they sat, by the time Roosevelt was inaugurated, and he was elected to bring the trauma to an end. From the sophisticates at the helms of great corporations, to the workers in their plants, and to so many suddenly living in destitute poverty, the devastation of the downturn was visually stunning—­on city streets, in small towns, and in rural areas. One oft-­cited statistic said it all: by 1933, one in four Americans was unemployed. A recovery through unseen natural corrective dynamics of capitalism—­minimal government intervention—­was an idea no longer worthy of the average person’s

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confidence. Roosevelt was soundly elected with a mandate for change. As welcome as a new approach was by the electorate, a seismic shift in the nature of government action could only work if it were explained. In this, Roosevelt excelled. In this chapter I focus on Roosevelt, his communication techniques and words, but also on the underlying beliefs he seems to have held about public opinion. It was his paradigm, his “lay theories” of public opinion (as opposed to scholarly ones) that—­among other things—­made it possible to create a model president–­public dialogue. As presidential scholar Stephen Skowronek elaborates, Roosevelt was bent on his own reconstruction of the presidency. While his smashing of norms had many dimensions, his keen rhetorical alterations to the concept of public opinion are the obvious place to start in a book about political communication in the 1930s.1 Certainly, not all of Roosevelt’s initiatives survived public scrutiny or judicial review, and still others failed simply for lack of proper logic, strategy, or execution. Yet many New Deal programs succeeded and were so popular and effective that many live on today, taken for granted as critical to American political economy and culture. It is difficult to imagine our functioning nation without Social Security, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Whether the American economy would have recovered from the Depression without the New Deal or the bolstering effects of the Second World War are hypotheticals that economists believe are impossible to address with certainty.2 Regardless, American capitalism—­significantly reformed—­survived its greatest challenge, and FDR was at its helm. He used existing tools, fashioned new ones, had the advantage of Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, and fully utilized the new and still inchoate power of radio. The national soundtrack of the 1930s—­the Golden Age of Radio—­ was one of Amos ‘n’ Andy, Tarzan of the Apes, The Jack Benny Program, concerts, soap operas, and professional baseball. Radio provided some powerful educational and political content, as I explain in chapter 5, but standing out in the clutter, given the great need for hope and guidance during the Depression, was Roosevelt’s comforting voice crackling through the radio in living rooms, taverns, places of business, and on the streets. By way of his thirty “fireside chats,” the public heard from their president directly and intimately. However, instances of Roosevelt’s thinking about popular sentiment and his machinations to persuade public opinion are found elsewhere, particularly in speeches to specific gathered groups, and even more so, in his confidential conversations with the White House press corps.

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This chapter is not a biographical sketch of FDR, a comprehensive analysis of his speeches, or a study of his extraordinary presidency. It is an empirically based meditation, or better yet, provocation, about his views of publics and their sentiments. My close reading of Roosevelt’s remarks in different settings—­the private meetings with White House reporters in the Oval Office from his earliest days in office as well as his public speeches before 1940—­reveals yet again the political acumen and shrewdness so often associated with his presidency. I argue here that his multifaceted approach to persuasion and governance are actually part of a fairly consistent view of the public and the press and the means for understanding both. By pulling on these threads, we better understand the ways he stretched the communicative possibilities of the presidency. We see that Roosevelt endeavored to create his imaginary public of the 1930s in a manner that suited many intended goals: economic recovery, prevention of a powerful fascist movement within the United States, solidification of his party’s control of Congress, and the establishment of a baseline, humane standard of living for the American family. FDR tried to talk a certain kind of public into existence, in admirable and problematic ways. In some respects, he generated assumptions about the public and its sentiments that presidents, journalists, and citizens rely on to this day. Roosevelt’s reimagining of the vital American conversation, between institutions and the people, persists. While I address this persistence in chapter 7, FDR’s views are particularly interesting in that they emerged in a moment so similar to our own. Today, as in the 1930s, we see a variety of worrying antidemocratic forces around us: the appearance of dangerous new forms of populism, a rise of extremist hate groups (now armed with social media), a politically destabilized Western Europe, and emboldened authoritarian regimes capable of sophisticated cyber warfare.3 Among the more worrisome contemporary challenges to President Biden is how to contend with a dramatically and deeply divided nation. America in 2021 is far more fiercely split than in the 1930s, but there was enough division in the 1930s that FDR needed to advocate for unity and cohesion. Biden will need to do much of the same, albeit in a way fitting our hypermediated and intensely cynical political environment. Roosevelt had—­relative to presidents before him and many after—­a sophisticated view of popular sentiment and the constellation of forces that move it. Although he was certainly not a scholar of public opinion, his nuanced understanding of it, embedded in his words and actions, make him a remarkable lay theorist of public opinion. We’ve no evidence of Roosevelt closely reading Aristotle, Jean-­Jacques Rousseau’s treatises, or works by Tocqueville and Bryce. That would be unlikely. He was instead his own sort of perceptive and persistent analyst of human nature, of institutional

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behavior, and what might be a true “general will” underlying the fluctuations of mass opinion.4 Put another way, he was interested in the climate of opinion and what makes it stable, all while keeping an eye on the weather—­the fluidity of more fleeting sentiments. We know, for example, that he paid astute, methodical attention to the mind-­boggling amount of mail he received from average citizens. He was the first president to demand and use polling tallies from both public surveys and private data compiled within the White House and by the Democratic National Committee (DNC). He had a keen interest in the intricacies of the press, radio programming, and the magazine business. Chronically important to Roosevelt for his entire life were the many conversations had over decades with friends and neighbors across social classes in his beloved home region, the upper Hudson Valley’s Dutchess County. What was his grand lay “theory” and associated methods? Interestingly, Roosevelt saw clearly what we now call the “social construction of public opinion”—­that public opinion, no matter the counting of letters or tallies of polls, is not really a concrete or easily measured truth about the popular sentiment. Instead, its meaning and power depend entirely on context. Public opinion was not, to him, an entity like a rock, an iron wrench, or an armchair, stable in existence and appearance to all who see them. Instead, he viewed public opinion as a nebulous concept and its meaning solely dependent on how it is measured, how it is expressed, and how it is transformed by communicator and medium. FDR’s worldview was complex and multifaceted, sharply focused on media and opinion formation. Before teasing it out a bit, we need to dip into the broad context: the sheer despair of the public, the hodgepodge of approaches to understanding public sentiment by journalists and politicians, and the nature of the inchoate polling industry. It was a disordered quagmire, and no scholar of history can argue that Roosevelt landed in the White House at a moment when public opinion was clear or measurable in exacting ways. Uncertainty about how people felt, and in particular, what people could accept by way of government intervention, was hard to parse. Roosevelt had to make sense of it and find his own way. Persuading the public to accept the inherent experimentation of the New Deal was as essential as the specific legislation he sought.

Back before the Crash The 1920s were roaring, but not in a good way for an increasing number of Americans. In the early years of the decade many critical sectors grew, and consumers benefited as their incomes increased and their workweeks decreased. The population crept upward, and the gross national product

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grew at a steady pace throughout the 1920s. Car ownership and electricity improved the nature of daily life, enabling tourism and serving as major boons to theaters, sports venues, and restaurants. Problem areas existed, though, even in the midst of what seemed to be unending expansion and improvement, and these difficulties grew worse as the decade wore on.5 Putting aside the faltering European economies and their drag on the United States, there was massive income disparity, chronic rural and urban poverty, and unemployment in multiple arenas of crop production, such as cotton farming. A brutal downturn in coal mining caused by the rising use of gas and oil in homes and businesses resulted in steady unemployment rates for mine workers. Rampant speculation in the stock market and a fierce desire for consumer goods led to factory overproduction (of automobiles, gramophones, radios, labor-­saving kitchen devices, and clothing, among other commodities) and more installment paying on credit. Borrowing on credit led to disaster after the stock market crash made it impossible for people to pay their debts. The availability of credit had also contributed to high demand for consumer goods, which led to unsustainable levels of overproduction in manufacturing. Companies had expanded facilities, hired more employees, and held larger inventories of goods only to see demand falter or disappear over the next few years. Popular lore in the United States holds that the Great Depression began with the stock market crash in 1929 (still the greatest decline recorded), and it remains the moment when most people lost confidence in the market itself. Over a few days in late October of that year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped around 25 percent, a stunning rebuke to what had been a booming market. This was a calamity for those with a stake in the market, with numerous ripple effects caused by those losses, but the Depression was already underway nationwide. Surplus goods and slowed consumer spending, the end of farm subsidies, bank failures, and pervasive droughts all weakened the economy in the years before the crash. Nonetheless, 1929 put an exclamation point on what was already a worrisome economic moment, and try as he did, President Herbert Hoover was at a loss to stop the bleeding. He attempted to intervene in the economy in important ways, albeit far less dramatically than Roosevelt would a few years later. Hoover held firmly to his belief in a combination of government programs and voluntary actions by industry, whereby commercial entities would self-­regulate in production and price setting to help stabilize the economy. Not much worked for Hoover. Congress passed and Hoover signed the Smoot-­Hawley Tariff Act, which raised tariffs, in the spring of 1930. Instead of boosting the American economy, the tariffs had horrendous and comprehensive negative effects, prompting a trade war: other nations

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raised tariffs as well in response to this dramatic American turn toward financial isolationism and further protections of businesses and workers. Although it is difficult to quantify with any precision the various contributing factors that led to a quickly worsening depression in the early 1930s, the Smoot-­Hawley Act was indisputably one of the most significant causes, which manifested in growing unemployment and attendant suffering. The late 1920s and 1930s are most commonly identified with the brutality of economic failure, unemployment, and destitute poverty. If we step back and try to imagine living in such a world and examine even a few of the many photographs of the period, the depth of the national trauma is clear. Adults and children starved, some froze in the elements while living under bridges and in parks, and others died from the many diseases that accompany sustained poverty and malnutrition. To say there was fear or hopelessness does not cover it at all: many Americans were in a cauldron of despair and desperation with no end in sight. The majority of Americans in the late 1920s lived close to, or well below, any reasonably drawn poverty line, and the country was changing rapidly, with cities growing as people fled rural areas battered by drought and an instability that made every day a hard scrabble for mere survival. By the time of Roosevelt’s first election as president in 1932, terror was deeply embedded in the fabric of life, and he was determined to take on both the economic and socioemotional state of the nation. As Ira Katznelson writes in his history and redefinition of the New Deal era, the nature of fear was not singular or easily summarized by any leader. It was more like a web of multiple anxieties, from the lingering horrors of a world war to the most visceral immediate dread of starvation, lynching in the South, foreigners, and democratic collapse as powerful dictatorships rose elsewhere. This web of fear was a smoldering backdrop to all we did and thought. Oddly, Katznelson notes, the era is not typically portrayed with fear as the primary, most profound context for all that occurred. Roosevelt was welcomed as a possible remedy for the sheer panic Americans felt. Yet fear was not conquered with his appearance; it was far too extensive, deep-­ seated, and difficult to dislodge in an age of growing global calamity.6 Much of the fear was heightened by the unknown. Why should Americans believe the Depression would end at all, when not much changed as the months turned into years? A Chicago schoolteacher at the time said, “I thought it was going to be forever and ever and ever. That people would always live in fear of losing their job, you know, fear.”7 In the early decades of the twentieth century our psychic core was still rurally based, individualistic, and independent in spirit, and so the Depression hit particularly hard. We were a people who saw self-­reliance as

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a touchstone above all others, and the economic downturn led to misery, hopelessness, and also—­overlooked and misunderstood by many today—­ shame. Shame and fear were the twin emotional forces undergirding the nation and its citizens, and their conflation was particularly devastating. Historian Lawrence Levine, in an essay on the Depression, quotes a letter from a destitute woman to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The writer, who asked to remain anonymous, explained that her clothes were so embarrassingly threadbare that she was ashamed to go to church. She posited that the First Lady’s clothes would fit her: could she be so kind as to send her any that she planned to discard?8 It’s a searing letter like so many based in desperation, pride, and shame, all felt at the same time. Americans who could not survive the Depression without government help, which was a large segment of the population, were deeply humiliated in ways that surprised them. They had grown up in a culture of self-­reliance, and their awful circumstances seemed—­even if the stock market had crashed, federally imposed tariffs were wreaking havoc with the economy, and drought ravaged the heartland—­somehow their fault. Americans had always found their way before in a spirited entrepreneurial manner. Cleverness and hard work would not save them in a nation with such a dangerous brew of structural problems, all coming to a head at the same moment.

Taking Office in Rocky Times In the early 1930s there was what now seems a painfully long gap between Election Day and Inauguration Day, when a new president took the oath of office. Until passage of the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution, presidents waited until March 4 (or March 5, if March 4 fell on a Sunday) to assume official duties. This four-­month period was likely never as grueling as the one before Franklin Roosevelt took office from President Herbert Hoover. By the end of his term Hoover was an unpopular leader who failed despite so much promise: before his disastrous single term, he had amassed an impressive and successful record in both business and government service. None of that mattered as he prepared to leave the White House because the economy continued to sink. The period from November 8, 1932, to March 4, 1933, was characterized by continued economic upheaval, rising unemployment, crushing poverty, bank failures, and hopelessness. It had been a bitter presidential campaign, one as personal, partisan, and raucous as those of subsequent decades, albeit without the intense glare of 24/7 cable television and multitudinous social media outlets

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spewing coarse talk, lies, and outrage. The transition between president and president-­elect after a nasty campaign was only made worse by the contrast in men: President Hoover’s genuine and ferocious adherence to his antigovernment intervention views looked particularly retrograde against Roosevelt’s preternatural patience and famously upbeat temperament. Hoover and his allies pursued a fierce and continuing battle against the president-­elect in those winter months, despite the pounding of a landslide election that threw Hoover from office. Roosevelt mostly took it in stride, but Hoover would not give up what became his lifelong campaign against the New Deal, its particular programs, and the strong government interventionist paradigm more generally. As Eric Rauchway notes in his marvelous book about the fraught leadership transition, Hoover would live for another thirty-­two years after his defeat, hoping (at first) to reenter the presidency after Roosevelt’s failure. Thereafter, he wanted to shape the Republican Party to his liking. Throughout the campaign and transition, sometimes in public, sometimes in private, Hoover would condemn most of what Roosevelt proposed, especially federal public works. Rauchway quotes Hoover, who explained that such a program would “break down our form of government. It would crack the timbers of our Constitution. . . . Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.”9 The early 1930s were a storm of epic proportions; from Roosevelt’s standpoint, it was precisely the moment for a profound retrenchment of the relationship between people and their government, as well as that between government and business. Before ascending to the presidency Roosevelt had toiled in the New York State Assembly, surviving the gruesome rough and tumble of Albany to become the state’s governor. He implemented relief programs using the powers of that office to some real success in parts of the state. Now he assumed a far more challenging role in the presidency and had the confidence to do so: putting aside the experience of government interventions in New York’s economy, he was a famously shrewd man who had closely studied his beloved distant cousin, Teddy Roosevelt. FDR had a charm of his own, but he intended to follow in Teddy’s charismatic footsteps as a strong executive and a man of action. This was FDR’s goal despite his daily physical struggles with pain and immobility. Some have argued that Roosevelt’s inability to walk without assistance due to contracting polio (or a paralytic neuropathy of some sort) in 1921 forced him to replace his previously active lifestyle of sporting activities with reading and conversation, activities that enabled extended development of his beliefs and political vision. Many scholarly and popular writers have traced his tremendous commitment to relieve

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Figure 2.1. Early warning, March 1933. After a brutal campaign, political observers understood well the challenges of shaping public opinion—­challenges Hoover had found impossible to surmount. Roosevelt’s preternatural confidence upon winning the election inspired hope, but also plenty of editorial eye-­rolling and skepticism. Cartoon by Jack Patton. Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

the suffering of the average American back to his own physical and emotional challenges, although social justice (even if often in the form of noblesse oblige) had roots in the larger Roosevelt family tree.10 The urgency to provide relief for so many who were suffering the effects of persistent poverty and starvation was something Roosevelt understood, and he hired individuals for the new administration whose thinking matched that perspective. As menacing as the domestic economic stress

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was a much broader and rapidly expanding fear of total democratic collapse: Could capitalism and democracy actually crumble, making way for tyrants and demagogues from the left or the right? Might Americans, in fits of hopelessness and rage, rebel against their form of government to find one that would provide proper jobs, housing, and food to feed their families? Dark, alarming questions and warnings about the fragility of democracy were everywhere, not only in the minds of academics or politicians. As the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote in his three-­volume history of the Roosevelt years, the president’s earliest days in office were dominated by nightmare scenarios of democracy’s demise: Whether revolution was a real possibility or not, faith in a free system was plainly waning. Capitalism, it seemed to many, had spent its force; democracy could not rise to economic crisis. The only hope lay in governmental leadership of a power and will which representative institutions seemed impotent to produce. Some looked enviously on Moscow, others on Berlin and Rome; abroad there seemed fervor, dedication, a steel determination. Could America match this spirit of sacrifice and unity?11

Roosevelt answered in the affirmative, and his otherworldly confidence was welcome at this moment. As he said in his first inaugural address, on March 4, 1933: “Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.”12 In campaign speeches throughout 1932 Roosevelt had blamed bankers and greedy industrialists while making the argument for stronger government intervention, and he elaborated in his early presidential speeches with more specificity. In his urgency, and with a largely cooperative Congress, Roosevelt said that his first one hundred days would be a period of intense focus on stabilizing the economy, providing relief to suffering Americans, and helping farms, banks, and manufacturers to find their footing. True to his word, those one hundred days saw a record-­breaking number of legislative actions, including the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought electricity to a huge swath of American homes, farms, and businesses across the South, and the establishment of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the earliest relief agency, which would create jobs, build schools, and feed the hungry. All of this had to be communicated, and it was, as America clung to his words.

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Radio and Letters to the President Radio was key to politics, culture, and social action in the 1930s; it was adopted by Roosevelt and also by his counterparts in Europe, with Adolf Hitler being a particularly adept user of the still-­novel medium. It was a medium that Roosevelt would deftly employ to explain his plans to the public, build political coalitions, prevent more panic, mobilize voluntary action, and in general, give Americans psychic strength to live through the Depression and, eventually, another world war. Beginning in the late 1920s and into the 1930s, radio stations began to pop up around the nation, with a tremendously rapid acceleration of broadcasting licenses awarded.13 The sweep of radio in the United States remains one of the most dramatic cases of diffusion of a communication technology, astounding early industry leaders, musicians, artists, politicians, and average Americans. In head-­spinning manner, in a little over a decade millions could suddenly listen to entertainment programming such as baseball games, sermons, government leaders’ speeches, and much else. It was a soaring and transformational change in American life and leisure, as so many scholars have documented. Buying a radio was in reach for all but the most destitute Americans, and hearing one was free in any case given that radios were everywhere and played in public—­in rural areas, small towns, and big cities. In one of the first comprehensive studies of radio, published in 1935, two social science pioneers—­Professors Hadley Cantril and Gordon Allport—­wrote that out of a population of about 127 million Americans of all ages, 78 million people were regular listeners, with 20 million of them often listening to the same program at the same time. News of the world—­news sheets and the cheap “penny press”—­had long been part of American public life, but now with radio the people could be drawn together powerfully and simultaneously. In our own time of a highly segmented audience of radio listeners, of numerous cable stations, and the internet, it is hard to imagine how impactful and magical radio was in forming collectives. Radio drew us in, created communities of listeners, and fostered an intimacy few media have matched since. Radio spoke to us in a voice, directly. The only technological competitor, with regard to intimacy, to evolve since the radio is the personal computing device. Just as we curl up with smartphones today to watch movies or sports, so Americans did in the first part of the twentieth century with their radios. Those who grew up with radio, before the diffusion of television, were drawn into a welcoming broadcast world where entertainers, advertisers, and actors spoke right to them with a new kind of warmth and familiarity. As Cantril and Allport put it in their 1935 book

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The Psychology of Radio, the effect of the new radio was profoundly different than print: “A voice belongs to a living person, and living people arrest and sustain our interest . . . the listener has an imaginative sense of participation in a common activity.”14 Paul Lazarsfeld, another giant of early American social science, who also advised the burgeoning radio industry, pondered the “seriousness” of radio: Radio is great entertainment, with concerts, comedies, and soap operas. Yet could it also be an educational agent competing with the power of print, a medium that had been around for hundreds of years? How might it be a force in Western democracy? The answer proved to be complicated, at least for social scientists. A few years later, in 1948, Lazarsfeld and another sociologist, Robert Merton, started to map out hypotheses about radio and politics, some of which ring true today, even if difficult to prove empirically. They argued that radio was an astoundingly compelling force in many respects, but three in particular: radio content—­whether news or entertainment—­legitimated speakers, causes, and ideas. Just by virtue of being on the radio, a person, group, or notion was singled out from the millions for attention. Radio highlights what should matter, and it “confers status” on those it broadcasts. Second, in addition to granting legitimacy or even authority, radio tells us what is normative—­what regular, mainstream people think and feel, and how they should behave. These functions of radio are good and bad, but on the negative side of the ledger is a third effect: radio produces what they called a “narcotizing dysfunction” among listeners. Merton and Lazarsfeld hypothesized that great consumption of programming on the radio made people believe they were actually participating in civic life. Instead of demonstrating, protesting, writing letters, and participating in other forms of political action, they listened to the radio, feeling as though the act of listening itself actually was civic participation. This, the researchers argued, was both new and dangerous because it could challenge the very nature of democracy. Radio listeners would be, in effect, drugged, sluggish, and passive, hardly the characteristics of active citizenship one hopes for in a democratic state.15 Difficult to prove then and now, there is far more passivity than activism associated with broadcast media consumption. In any case, Merton and Lazarsfeld were certain that radio dampened face-­to-­face community social and political action. Radio content may excite and radicalize, but it doesn’t necessarily spur physical activity that might get one out of the house. What was obvious to contemporary scholars and journalists, who were experiencing the new medium like everyone else, was how radio drew people together in dramatic and largely unexpected ways. They noticed it decades before Marshall McLuhan would argue that television served

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Figure 2.2. FDR at the radio. FDR addresses the nation from the White House in September 1934. Roosevelt’s extraordinary use of radio during his presidency is well known, but he had honed his skills with the medium to speak to the people of New York in his previous role as governor. Years in the rough-­and-­tumble of Albany as a legislator and executive enabled him to understand precisely how mass media could help circumvent obstructionist politics on the ground. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

that “global village” function:16 radio was there first and, in many ways, was far more revolutionary in its effects. As the journalist Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote breathlessly in the New York Times in 1932: Families with the same income often live very differently. In communal apartments, with standardized furniture, they could still exist on widely separated planes of taste and intellectual interest. In neither case need they have much in common beyond externals. But when they are all on the radio, there is little difference in essentials between the family in Park Avenue and the family in Hester Street, or in New York and Mandan, or on a college campus and in a mill village.  .  .  . Karl Marx never thought of anything so socializing as the radio.17

While academics and journalists pondered the positive and negative impacts of such a powerful new mass medium, FDR did not pause as he stepped into the Oval Office. As governor of New York he had already used

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radio to make his case to citizens over the heads of what was a difficult-­ to-­maneuver Republican legislature and state newspapers unsupportive of his relief policies. By the time Roosevelt ascended to the presidency in 1933 he was an experienced and gifted user of radio as a means to explain public policy and political dynamics to average citizens, while also touching their hearts in such emotionally wrenching times. Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” were the first regular and direct communications to Americans. The first address, on Sunday, March 12, 1933, concerned the banking crisis and the need for temporary nationwide closures to help stabilize the financial system. Over the rest of his time in office, Roosevelt covered a huge number of issues, arguing his position and promoting his legislative agenda. Whether a defense of “court packing” in 1937, general discussions of governance, capitalism, currency manipulation, or specific New Deal programs, Roosevelt was eloquent and compelling. With firm and reassuring tones, he urged his listeners to pay attention, to learn, to keep faith, and to communicate back to him through letters. Roosevelt turned a one-­way medium into an interactive process. People felt as though he was speaking to them personally and they responded in kind, pouring out their agreement, admiration, worries, and often, their fierce opposition to Roosevelt’s policies and worldview. To say that many responded to those evening addresses is a tremendous understatement. Citizens from all states, of all ethnicities, social classes, and ages, wrote to both radio stations and the White House in numbers never before seen. This wasn’t the first time citizens had written to the White House. The practice existed from the earliest days of the republic and accelerated during the Civil War as people wrote fervently to President Lincoln in the midst of tragedy and bloodshed of mammoth proportions. But it was different with FDR. Ira R. T. Smith, who worked in the White House overseeing incoming mail for nine different presidents over the course of fifty years, was astonished by the explosion of letters to Roosevelt. Although there had been periods of a bit more mail volume, Mr. Smith reported that the White House received a few hundred letters a day addressed to the president before Roosevelt took office and between five thousand and eight thousand letters a day after Roosevelt took office, depending on the events of the moment or the reactions to a fireside chat. Smith recalled that Roosevelt often asked his radio audience of millions to tell him their troubles, and they took it to heart as a personal invitation, which would trigger avalanches of mail. The president was not the only one to receive letters, since many wrote—­usually positively—­to the First Lady as well. (Even Roosevelt’s beloved Scottish Terrier started receiving mail addressed to him, often signed with paw prints. Smith was asked to

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deal with that load of mail, but he drew the line at performing secretarial work for Fala).18 The work of cataloging the letters, distributing them to the right offices for handling, and showing both Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor a large sample, were huge efforts. When there was an unusual decline in the number of letters coming in, Roosevelt wanted to know why. He then worried that his desire for two-­way communication—­and his ability to reach the public directly—­was waning. The president learned from the letters—­the content, volume, temporal pattern, and composition of the senders. He undoubtedly knew that he would learn about the letter writer’s experience, but also his or her interpersonal network of Americans. Each writer lived in a social world of family, neighbors, and coworkers, and they often reported on their communities. It is impossible to verify who they might represent, but writers’ perceptions of local public opinion were helpful. For example, Robert F. Skillings of Portland, Maine, thanked the president in October 1934 for the “leftward leanings” of Roosevelt’s fireside chat of September 30 and also noted: “I am convinced that more and more Maine people are coming to believe that the interests of those called ‘middle class’ are more closely tied up with the interests of the workers than with the interests of the owners.”19 E. E. McLeish of Alexandria, Virginia, reported on local reception of Roosevelt’s chat of June 24, 1938: “I preferred to hear it not at home but at a downtown lunchroom frequented by railroad and other workers. Slot machines and pin games suspended for the greater part of your talk; heads nodded in agreement as important points went home; bronzed men smiled and nodded to one another.”20 Letters were one way the president and his staff tried to measure public opinion but a new technique for measuring it—­the sample survey—­was also of great interest. The Roosevelt White House was the first to have an “in-­house” polling expert. Newspaperman Emil Hurja, born in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Finnish immigrants, came to Washington and worked initially for the DNC, helping to dole out patronage jobs in the most strategic ways possible. Eventually he worked more directly for the White House trying to ascertain support for the president using mail counts, raw data from canvassing by Democratic operatives on the ground, and published data as well. As far as we know, Hurja did not actually conduct many surveys; there was no bevy of interviewers or “phone bank” in the White House, and he did not contract with data collection companies for services.21 Instead, he used past vote totals in elections, evidence from published surveys, and unpublished data from George Gallup and others to estimate support for Roosevelt across states. One major task was to

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advise the 1936 FDR reelection operatives on where to focus campaign resources for maximum electoral impact. Hurja was a pioneer in making “statistical corrections” to poll data, whether the published straw polls of the Literary Digest or the more sophisticated sample surveys of Gallup.22 There is no question that he became a key actor in the mid-­1930s, particularly around the issues of FDR’s electoral strength. Although his methods for deconstructing and reaggregating poll data and the nature of his influence on DNC chairman James Farley and the president are somewhat murky, the White House was keenly interested in all indicators of public opinion, qualitative and quantitative (e.g., electoral predictions, poll data, letter counts, newspaper editorials, and personal conversations with opinion leaders). Methods for assessing public opinion were many, but my sense of the Roosevelt White House is that the daily press—­newspapers, not radio—­ was clearly the most important and persuasive indicator of public sentiment.23 Both the news articles in major and regional papers, as well as the editorials and ideological commentary in those vehicles, were absolutely essential for FDR. As has been noted by many historians of Roose­ velt, and his staff who wrote memoirs, much of his rhetorical strategy, persuasion technique, and policy activity was predicated upon press reaction. Roosevelt absorbed and navigated the press coverage, but most important for my purposes here, he tried to influence that coverage in persistent and sophisticated ways. In addition to his speeches, Roosevelt cajoled, shamed, inspired, and befriended members of the White House press corps, as I discuss below. This continuing conversation between FDR and the press is, to my mind, the precise place—­the rhetorical and spatial location—­where Roosevelt tried to will the public into existence for his purposes. Roosevelt’s relationships with the press have long been of interest, and they tell us much about both parties—­the man himself and the fairly stable group of White House reporters who covered him. Looking at the dynamics of these associations sheds light on why and how this particular interaction is key to understanding the 1930s as the profound moment for the emergence of public opinion as a concrete, meaningful notion.

Ideas about Public Opinion in the 1930s Before considering a few of FDR’s speeches to a variety of groups, as well as his regular private meetings with the White House press corps, one must understand how public opinion professionals (pollsters, market researchers, journalists, practitioners in the new “public relations” field, and opinion scholars) were thinking about public opinion. After all, the

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business of public opinion—­measuring it, selling it, buying it, and printing it—­had a logic, a case behind it. In the books, journals, speeches, and products of the new industry, we find clear, bold, and immensely confident arguments from professionals who shaped the way popular sentiment was viewed throughout the late 1920s and 1930s.24 The central ideas from this young, quickly expanding industry easily found their way to the White House, to newspaper editorial offices, and to the many professors who served as advisors to FDR. The budding industry created the context Roosevelt landed in as he took office in 1933, and of course Emil Hurja would have been well aware of the conundrums in his own field. What did this loosely gathered intelligentsia of the 1930s make of public opinion—­what it was and how best to measure it—­on behalf of public servants, academics, engaged citizens, journalists, and companies hoping to market consumer goods? A meeting recounted in a 1925 political science journal was particularly instructive to my mind when I stumbled on it as a student more than thirty years ago. This “Round Table on Political Statistics” was held in Chicago as part of the annual meeting of political science professors. It’s not clear which academics were in attendance, but it was most likely the top leaders in the field. The discussion was summarized by Arthur Holcombe, a political historian and distinguished public servant who worked for the United Nations and consulted with Chiang Kai-­Shek on the constitution for the new nation of Taiwan, among other things. During the meeting Holcombe reported that there was a lively debate about exactly how to measure opinion, whether there was “such a thing” as public opinion, and when or how an opinion actually becomes public. Holcombe notes: 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 the 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.25

This sounds odd to us almost a century later but it was modest and realistic in the moment: public opinion, as a concept, was so hazy in the eyes of these scholars that they threw their hands up and jumped right to measurement. Normally, social scientists decide on the precise meaning of a concept as best they can before heading out to measure it. But the apparently urgent need to measure, and skip over the definitional problem, was enough to leave more difficult questions of meaning behind. In any

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case, straw polls conducted to assess opinion had already been around for a while, at least with regard to presidential prognostication. So social scientists were accustomed to this form of quantification conducted by journalists. The Literary Digest, for example, had been polling the public since 1916 with a fine record of accuracy until 1936, when they wrongly predicted a victory by Alf Landon over FDR.26 The academic discussion neatly reflects fundamental confusion and disagreement about how to assess public opinion, factors that are still with us today. It is the context Roosevelt found as he came to office. He would, unlike any president before him, have increasing access to the new “science” of polling, but he also understood its inherent limitations in discerning nuance or changeability in opinion. Polling is a blunt instrument because most political polls measure a fleeting moment in time, often with little reliable evidence of the strength, intensity, or informed nature of the opinions included. Roosevelt lived in the same world as the ambitious, entrepreneurial pollsters—­some academic, many seeking profit.27 Unlike today, when the polling industry is more diffuse, in the 1930s the industry was characterized by open, collegial relationships among most pollsters, academic social scientists, and the White House.28 The small community was loaded with a combination of political mercenaries, college professors, and businessmen looking to build lucrative client bases, establish legitimacy, and develop theories about human behavior. This enclave—­so lively with exchange and permeable boundaries between industry and politics—­was just coming together with force during the Roosevelt years and, in particular, right around his second campaign and subsequent term in office. As Melvin Holli notes in his book about Democratic pollster Hurja: “[Hurja] often had access to pre-­publication Gallup, Literary Digest, and other polls, which were passed on to Roosevelt and gave the president his ‘edge’ in being ahead of the press and Congress in understanding the public will.”29 While we might look at this data-­sharing today with cynicism and even a bit of horror, it was not seen that way at all in the 1930s. A Time magazine issue published on March 2, 1936, with Hurja on the cover, included this note in the accompanying article: “Little polling is done specifically for him [Hurja], but he ferrets out many polls of which the public never hears and adds them to his store of information.” The article’s author goes on to note how Hurja lunched with George Gallup, trading ideas. We do not know how often that happened, but the two men had much to discuss by way of research methods and outcomes—­sampling, accuracy of predictions, and the like.30 With assistance from Hurja and others, Roosevelt’s approach to public opinion was politically practical, as it usually was in all things. He watched

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Figure 2.3. Emil Hurja, 1938. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to have a pollster in the White House working on election prediction. Hurja’s methods were crude but systematic and rational for the period, and they were deemed helpful by the Democratic Party and the president. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

the “weather” of the public sentiment but also the “climate”; the former was passing, the latter was lasting and profound.31 The president had a variety of ideas about public opinion in specific instances, but he was, without setting pen to paper in a magazine or academic journal, building his own model of what public opinion was, the nature of the public, the varying influences of the press, and the uses of so many different techniques for understanding the people, opinion polls, letters, and conversation among them.32

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An Educable and Rational Public The president was not much interested in abstraction or political philosophy; far from it. As state legislator, governor, and then commander in chief, he was a pragmatic politician, a tactician, and a man mired in the web of relationships and complicated politics needed to pursue his programs. Like other executives and effective leaders—­in politics as elsewhere—­he did have what academics often call “lay theories” about the world. Lay theories are more than fleeting opinions or narrow attitudes. They are closer to idealized systems with moving parts, with consistent notions about cause and effect, and with some real thoughtfulness of purpose. Psychologists have long been interested in lay or “implicit” theories as they have tried to understand how people string together experience, observation, and prediction in their daily lives. One early scholar in this area was Fritz Heider, who in 1958 famously argued that there is such a thing as “common sense” psychology, and mapping it is important for understanding peoples’ actions. He wrote: In everyday life we form ideas about other people and about social situations. . . . Though these ideas are usually not formulated, they often function adequately. They achieve in some measure what a science is supposed to achieve: an adequate description of the subject matter which makes prediction possible. . . . If a person believes that the lines in his palm foretell his future, this belief must be taken into account in explaining certain of his expectations and actions.33

Another name for these “theories” we have about the world comes from anthropology, where they are sometimes called “folk models”—­ commonsense understandings about the world, about the relationships between action and results, and accordingly, about how one should act. People use frameworks to view the world and often act predictively, even though their personal systems or modes of thinking are not written down or described as such.34 What these scholars mean is that people have strong views about the world that are weightier than having attitudes or perspectives. Roosevelt had beliefs, but more important, he had sustained notions about the public and public sentiment. And he did enough talking, much of it available in archived transcripts, that we can get a sense of his models about public opinion and behavior. No one writing about FDR or other historical figures can see inside their heads, but we can try to dig out their assumptions and resulting actions. There’s no need to overplay the notion of a “theory,” but saying that Roosevelt had patterned ways of thinking about

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popular sentiment is shorthand for his experimentation, consistency and continual elaboration. This is why the language of “lay” or “folk” theories or models is helpful: it forces the analyst of public texts to look for configurations and regularities. For example, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. posits that Roosevelt saw politics as an educational process. Schlesinger argued in 1959 about Roosevelt: What he really cared about was high politics—­not politics as intrigue, but politics as education. Nothing government could do mattered much, he deeply believed, unless it was firmly grasped by the public mind. . . . The New Deal itself became a great schoolhouse. . . . Thus Roosevelt told [the journalist] Anne O’Hare McCormick that NRA [the National Recovery Administration] was valuable above all else as an educational agency, forcing those within it and without the codes to do some hard thinking on the central problems of the economy.35

Here Schlesinger is not simply noting that Roosevelt used frequent references to education or persuasion, but that his entire paradigm for politics was pedagogical. Schlesinger goes much further and puts forth the idea that education was the predominant driver behind Roosevelt’s view of New Deal institutions—­that institutions were teachers, as was he. The frame of “education” is useful now, sixty years after Schlesinger wrote. Delving a bit deeper beyond that general frame, there are numerous places to look for clues—­transcripts of White House press meetings, recounting of conversations by his staff and his contemporaries, memos and letters to and from the president, and actions he took and did not take. Particularly helpful are two types of data: speeches to organized groups on particular policy matters or general topics, and more so, confidential (at the time) meetings with the White House press corps. Because I am primarily interested in the Depression years, I stop short of the months leading up to our entry into the Second World War, as political calculations and the president’s thinking shifted to focus on matters beyond the New Deal and domestic economic recovery. The first trove of data—­Roosevelt’s speeches—­is only one source from a man who spoke extensively and often. Taken together, the speeches are an excellent fount for insights into Roosevelt’s theories of public opinion—­formation, expression, and measurement. The fireside chats are interesting in this regard as well, and have been studied thoughtfully by many. The chats were attempts to speak directly to the people and less about them, which is my central focus here. (I studied the chats as well, but they did not yield as much talk about the public as speeches in other forums.) Just over sixty public speeches were of particular interest

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because they specifically mention the public or popular opinion and public sentiments. This is far from a review of all of Roosevelt’s utterances, which—­transcribed for the record—­run in the hundreds for the period of interest of the 1930s. It’s more a provocation for what to look for in his conversations with the press corps. Roosevelt relied on the same staff for almost all the speeches in the period, regardless of subject, and employed a consistent approach to editing them.36 A variety of lay theory components are revealed in the speeches, but what stands out is his view that the people are essentially rational and that they themselves would enforce new legislation. From the earliest speeches, FDR tended to see the public as logical and persuadable, but limited in patience. In addition, the people were, despite their lucidity, vulnerable to those peddling bad information and harmful agendas, as will be shown in the next section when examining his conversations with the press. Rationality is defined as the ability to reason with logic and facts. In one oft-­cited and controversial 1932 speech while he was still the governor of New York, Roosevelt spoke candidly about the public. The setting was the commencement for graduates of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. Roosevelt’s second home of Warm Springs, two hours due south of Oglethorpe, was a place to relax and swim, activities that served as therapy for his paralysis. The most quoted phrase from the speech is his call for “bold persistent experimentation” to solve our economic woes, but he is straightforward about public opinion as well, arguing that when strong leadership and transparent objectives persist based on the welfare of the people, public opinion will follow. He criticizes current leaders for focusing on particulars instead of persuasive appeals to the public on the level of broad and vital goals. Government must speak clearly about wide objectives, and this clarity in articulation will make it possible to rally the people effectively. We must all face facts, and if we do, rationality in public discussion will win the day and move us forward. Critically, FDR believed and said often that the people have limited patience, a rationale he would use for the bold legislative agenda he enacted in the wildly busy first one hundred days of his administration. Again and again in Roosevelt’s rhetoric we see the assumption that the people, rational and attentive as they are, can only tolerate so much inaction: “The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.” It’s a view of the public that justified rapid action, a hallmark of the years to come, but the new graduates of Oglethorpe heard it early on.37 Months later, in August, he again extolled the rationality of the people upon hearing a good argument. In arguing to repeal Prohibition, he told an enormous campaign audience of one hundred thousand in Sea Girt, New Jersey, that

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The Democratic Party fairly and squarely met the issue [in the party platform]. It adopted, by an overwhelming vote, a plank so plain and clear and honest that no one could doubt its meaning and the candidates accepted this statement one hundred percent. And then public opinion, moved by a true American admiration for brave and honest statement, expressed itself in no uncertain terms. It liked the Democratic platform. It liked people who spoke their minds. It liked courage and candor.38

For students of public opinion, these are interesting statements, for they reflect so well, early on, Roosevelt’s stated beliefs, revisited many times, that the public responds to good argument, “courage and candor.”39 A rock-­ solid belief in the wisdom of a public properly argued to would inspire his techniques for communication, like the fireside chats, which commenced only seven months later with the critical address on the 1933 bank crisis. By 1936, the president was even more confident in office. Visiting Chautauqua, New York, Roosevelt spoke to the importance of peace, even as European nations headed to war against German aggression: Americans must try to choose peace if they can, and if leadership is strong, public opinion will be unanimous. Unanimity, he knew, was only possible if the public was clearheaded and rational, an idealized body that he always hoped to will into existence himself.40 At the Jackson Day dinner in Washington in 1936, a yearly gathering held by the Democratic Party, Roosevelt spoke about the parallels between Andrew Jackson’s presidency and his own. He noted that Jackson was subject to the distortion of his populist message by newspapers, although he fought it nonetheless. FDR claimed that, like Jackson, he was getting through to average Americans despite the negative powers of the press. Leaning on the letters he received from families and businessmen of all sorts, he noted that the mail was reassuring and appreciative. Critically, the letters were not emotional or fawning, but rational: “The people of America know the heart and know the purpose of their Government.” And this understanding, of Roosevelt and his policies, is based in reason: We can be thankful that men and women in all walks of life realize more and more that Government is still a living force in their lives. They understand that the value of their Government depends on the interest which they display in it and the knowledge they have of its policies. A Government can be no better than the public opinion which sustains it.41

In a 1939 radio interview with Lowell Mellett, a former journalist who became a government information office executive, Roosevelt emphasized the importance of radio—­a medium that, he thought, “rivals” the press. And

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no doubt he preferred it, given the battles he would have with publishers and journalists during his administration. He argued that popular sentiment needed to be informed, quoting George Washington’s belief that “public opinion be enlightened.” Going further, FDR argued that radio should “correct the kind of misinformation that is sometimes given currency,” an obvious broadside against newspapers. He stated that people are smart enough to reject false reporting, and that government must provide the truth to them: In some communities it is the unhappy fact that only through the radio, is it possible to overtake loudly proclaimed untruths or great exaggerated half-­truths. While, to be sure, the people have learned to discriminate pretty well between sober facts and exciting fiction, they have a right to expect their Government to keep them supplied with the sober facts in every way possible.42

The public was rational, could be aroused (a word he often used) in positive ways by government leaders at national, state, and local levels. A sophisticated turn for Roosevelt was the notion that public opinion would be the enforcer of new laws and new programs when they were passed by Congress. This idea flowed naturally from his optimistic view of a rational public, and so he talked about “courts” or “bars” of public opinion—­that would insure the effectiveness of legislation for good. He spoke in ways that resonate with John Locke’s seventeenth-­century notion of a “law of opinion”—­political theory outlining how norms or opinions of a community are more effective than any type of government enforcement. If the public is rational and steady once they are properly educated, it followed logically to Roosevelt that they would be strong regulators. In a 1940 letter to governors, Roosevelt wrote regarding the Selective Training and Service Act (the peacetime conscription law enacted before the wartime changes to the draft): “A favorable and intelligent public opinion, based on a just and impartial administration of this most important defense measure, can be more effective in securing proper and effective administration of the law than the penalties written into the statute.”43

Theory in Hand, Roosevelt Navigates the Press The public was a wise and judicious enforcer, if an impatient one, when informed. By the time of his 1939 radio interview with Lowell Mellett, Roosevelt’s ideas about poor or unfair reporting in the print media were fully crystallized. He was even more steady than he had been at the start of his administration, after six grueling years of alternately educating and berating journalists and publishers. No matter the ability of Americans to

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be rational and to hear out their president, press distortion was inevitable, or so FDR posited in his many conversations with the press. Roosevelt’s press conferences—­the frequency, style, and substance—­ were markedly different from those of his predecessors. FDR revolutionized the nature of the relationship between the president and the Washington press corps in lasting ways that have affected most subsequent presidents in some fashion. The approach and style were his own, and no president before Roosevelt made such vigorous moves to build personal relationships with the journalists covering him daily. After years in the Albany trenches, Roosevelt had a fairly sophisticated framework for dealing with journalists. He put all of his effective techniques to work as soon as he landed in the Oval Office. The way he spoke with the press is complicated and revealing. Thanks to rigorous, unflinching, professional secretarial transcription of his closed-­door meetings with the press, we can scrutinize his notions of public opinion, media, and how he saw the American people as a body. FDR’s hero, Teddy Roosevelt, was a flamboyant and engaging character that the press enjoyed covering. Yet neither the first Roosevelt nor subsequent presidents—­Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, or Hoover—­were particularly deft managers of media relations. Presidents who served prior to FDR often had close relationships with particular journalists or publishers, but on the whole they either avoided the press or did not deign to meet much with the corps, holding their noses and finding the whole business annoying. Franklin Roosevelt changed that immediately, as so many of his contemporaries noted. He did away with the standing practice whereby journalists had to submit questions in advance (many of which presidents simply ignored) and dramatically increased the number of press conferences to twice weekly. He introduced the notions of “background” and “off-­the-­record” designations, called journalists by their first names, and injected the meetings with his tremendous charm and conviviality. There was much laughter and good-­natured argument, repartee, and, after the very first session, a round of applause from the correspondents, who were both shocked and relieved: this would be a different president, an accessible man, and one they could cover with vigor and panache. Although there are some photos of these meetings, it doesn’t take much to imagine the scene. Unlike previous presidents, Roosevelt held the meetings in the Oval Office (or at Hyde Park and other locations, if he was away), with men crowded closely around his desk, getting there early to chat with the president or lingering after the meeting was over. Around one hundred regulars squeezed into the intimate quarters as Roosevelt cajoled, hooted, argued, and broke real news, all while smoking with his signature cigarette holder. Leo Rosten, a political scientist who interviewed and surveyed active reporters in the 1930s, wrote in 1937 that

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[Roosevelt’s] answers were swift, positive, illuminating. He had an astonishing amount of exact information at his fingertips. He showed an impressive understanding of public problems and administrative methods. . . . When he evaded a question it was done frankly, with a disarming smile, not—­a la his predecessors—­with a scowl. He was thoroughly at ease: poised, confident, indicating his pleasure in the give and take of the press conference.44

Much of Roosevelt’s success in managing the press in these first few years was due to his innate talents, but he also had a remarkable press secretary, Stephen Early. Early had been an experienced journalist for the Associated Press and had a decades-­long acquaintance with Roosevelt. They would remain close partners and friends for the rest of Roosevelt’s life, and there is no question that Early’s innate sense of press dynamics and his wide and deep network of journalist colleagues were critical to successful press relationships.45 As Rosten and others have noted, the initial thunderous, widespread approval of FDR, who seemed to have mesmerized even the most cynical and negative members of the press corps, turned sour after a few years.

Figure 2.4. Stephen Early, 1939. Early, adept at persuasion, threats, and strategy on behalf of the administration, was the first modern press secretary for an American president. Coming from industry, he never thought he would remain in Washington for long but ended up working for President Roosevelt from 1933 to 1945 and again for President Truman in 1950. He remains the longest serving presidential press secretary in history. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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Figure 2.5. The White House press corps. Reporters in the White House press room in the politically raucous days of 1937. FDR may have not been successful in winning over their publishers, many of whom were increasingly opposed to the New Deal, but he typically charmed the White House press by giving reporters time to call their offices and meet their deadlines. He took pains to accommodate their schedules and logistics, as they often followed him and Mrs. Roosevelt north to Hyde Park and south to Warm Springs. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

As some programs of the New Deal failed, as Roosevelt came under increasing scrutiny and criticism from all corners, and as he angered the correspondents’ bosses (their publishers), his charm and jovial nature annoyed the press. Early, meanwhile, grew more confident and his brash ways irked the journalists. It became increasingly difficult to control the message coming from the White House. These rocky relations would continue through the failed 1937 “court-­packing” attempt by Roosevelt and up until the entrance of the United States into the Second World War, when the wartime footing entirely reset all press relationships. It is clear, reading the press conference transcripts through the 1930s, how Roosevelt became increasingly agitated by the press and vice versa. Although the meetings were still convivial, and Roosevelt still used the forums to break news, contain rumors, correct falsehoods, and try to manipulate the journalists, he spent more and more time arguing with

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them about the nature of their coverage. His truly vehement remarks were reserved for their publishers, however: Roosevelt nearly always maintained that the Washington press corps were merely doing their jobs but that their coverage was negative due to the oppositional owners, whom FDR saw as his enemies.46 Two outstanding Roosevelt themes from the White House press conferences help us to understand his view of the public: his belief in the importance of unmediated president–­public communication and his view that the press was distorting statements and policies owing to the pressure of their publishers as well as their chronic, professionally induced cynicism. In terms of the larger argument of this book, these techniques were critical to his construction of a public, that is, the way he tried to will an American public into existence as a legitimate entity supportive of the New Deal. It was a public he needed to protect from the press and its ways in order to enable its fundamental wisdom and natural rationality. These techniques were borrowed (effectively or not) by future presidents, and by President Donald Trump most recently. Because Roosevelt held so many press conferences and availabilities, there is an extensive archive of transcripts for scholars to examine. After a general perusal of these meetings throughout the 1930s, I focused more intensely on Roosevelt’s hundreds of remarks (brief and lengthy) about the press itself, which yielded many of his lengthiest discourses about the public and public opinion.47 As in his speeches, Roosevelt leaned on the notion that the public was astute but could be persuaded and made volatile by those with bad intentions. The people were patient but could only withstand so much problematic coverage, hence the importance of the president in three roles: leader, communicator, and educator. This view comes through in his speeches to many groups, but it takes on far more intensity and specificity in the confines of the Oval Office press meetings. Because so much of the conversation was “off the record” at the time, we might treat it as a clearer path to Roosevelt’s thinking, although he was, of course, sophisticated enough to be measured. On-­the-­record remarks were often written up or approved for publication by his closest associates, Early and his speechwriter, Sam Rosenman. From what they have written in their remembrances, it seems as though Roosevelt’s thoughts, the perspectives shared with them, and his actions are fairly consistent. The gap between the in-­confidence discussions and what came out in the press was usually narrow as a result of their general communication practice and kept to a small group of aides.

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The Public as Newspaper Victims Roosevelt knew that the public could withstand some inaccurate reporting, and he sustained his lay theory about innate American wisdom throughout his presidency, but it was his task to watch over the broader public opinion formation process like a hawk. The president dove right in, arguing hard about press coverage of the administration in May of 1933, only three months after taking office. Before giving a few examples, he made the plea to White House reporters’ patriotism, noting that the American press would hurt the United States around the world through problematic coverage. Foreign readers are not as discerning as domestic ones: There is another—­and I am talking between us—­there is another angle [of press coverage] that does disturb me. There are a lot of people in other parts of the world who take what they read as true. They haven’t got on to the fact that we are a nation of spoofers (laughter) in our press (laughter). . . . What I am thinking about is this country and also about things we are trying to do in the world, that we are trying to do for the peace and the peoples of the world that have been seriously hurt by things that have appeared that were not true in our American papers.48

In November 1934, speaking with the press in his study at Hyde Park, Roosevelt began a broader critique of the press that he kept up well into the subsequent years of his presidency. He discussed what was then called “interpretive journalism” (analytic reporting that tries to put statements and events in context): The President: This is a severe thing to say and I just say it strictly in the family and off the record—­why the American public today is paying less and less attention to news stories because so many of them have become interpretive. That really is true. . . . I know how hard it is and I must say it is a hell to write them and I think it is a mistake for newspapers to go over into that field in the news stories. They are beginning to lose public confidence in news. I have a sort of sixth sense about the public and they are beginning to lose it more and more. Q [A reporter]: You cannot fool the public. The President: It is a very serious question for the future of the American newspaper. I really honestly believe that. Q: As I understand it, give the people the facts and let them judge for themselves.

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The President: That is the point, give them the facts and nothing else. In other words, reduction ad absurdum.49

Roosevelt managed, over the course of what was apparently several minutes, to underscore the wisdom of the public, critique deeply contextual interpretive reporting that was becoming more common in papers, tell journalists how to do their jobs, note that people no longer think highly of newspapers, and state that he had a special connection to public opinion. By 1938, what looked like annoyance turned into vehemence as he argued that his connection to the public was always far superior to that of journalists. Here his comments were related to the fair labor standards he hoped to implement (including limits on working hours and the establishment of minimum wages across industries), despite the fight with courts over constitutionality. He wondered aloud why the press would want to hurt the people: The point that I get back to, the point that I made before, is that the Press can be largely responsible for cutting out the petty stuff and getting their shoulders in behind national recovery, if they want to do it. They won’t hurt me. Oh, no! It is a much bigger thing than any individual. But they may hurt about 125,000,000 people. They have a very great responsibility. . . . And I want to tell you, with due solumnity [sic], that we are beginning to get a phrase in this country and it is bad for the newspapers: “Oh, that is one of those newspaper stories [apparently imitating a regular American reader].”50

He then noted the superiority of his own relationship to the public: Now, that [public dismissal of newspaper stories] is an actual fact, and, mind you, I am more closely in touch with public opinion in the United states than any individual in this room. I have got a closer contact with more people than any man in this room. I get a better cross section of opinion. . . . You, all of you—­it is an essential thing—­it is not a derogatory statement on my part—­you cannot get a national picture the way I can. . . . [N]early all of you are essentially—­you[r] business is a local one. Some of you are connected with chain papers, you rely to a certain extent on the judgment of people who, again, are in the local field. There is not a newspaperman that comes into my office that understands the ramifications of the national problems.51

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This is one of the more interesting arguments that Roosevelt made about the public and its sentiments, but it is not surprising to students of his rhetorical approach. Beginning with his earliest fireside chats, Roosevelt encouraged people to write him those heartfelt letters, which they did in droves. Between this and his travels in the country—­to vacation sites, to his beloved Georgia hot springs for rejuvenation, and to his homestead in Hyde Park—­he believed he had not only a good grasp of public opinion but, in contrast to the newspapers, an authoritative one. He had no real proof of this, but everyone could see his constant gravitational pull to the voice of the common person. His interest was genuine and unflagging. Roosevelt often tried to frame national economic and labor challenges in the context of his friends and neighbors of the working class in the Hudson Valley. Historian John Sears quotes FDR’s talk to a local group near his home: “Perhaps my thoughts [when preparing for fireside chats] went back to this land of individual citizens who I have known so well in Dutchess County all my life.”52 This is in opposition to our contemporary, 2020s politician rhetoric that calls out a particular person they have met only briefly, if at all—­a brave soldier, a struggling worker, a sick child. Roosevelt preferred to talk about people he knew well. A fine example comes from Roosevelt’s interest in and understanding of rural life. The link between his observations on soil erosion on his Hyde Park farm and his invention of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) is well known. The CCC was established to fight the disastrous dust bowl conditions by planting trees (3.5 billion of them), thereby replenishing land ruined by farming practices and erosion. Particularly after his life-­ changing paralysis, he took time to talk to the folks in his hometown and throughout the nearby Hudson Valley villages. Scholars trace his interest in bringing electricity to the Tennessee Valley to his great concerns about the lack of electric power in upstate New York and the suffering it wrought. In Warm Springs, Georgia, the “Little White House,” he may have learned enough about the boll weevil’s devastation on cotton crops in rural areas to establish two vital New Deal programs. And Roosevelt said that the inspiration for the Rural Electrification Administration came as he drove around rural Georgia during his days at Warm Springs and evaluated the struggles people faced.53 In general, FDR had an intense interest in landscapes, ecology, and the ways that average Americans were profoundly connected to the functionality and beauty of the natural environment. I would go a step further and posit that public opinion—­as known to him by his constant rides through the countryside—­came most clearly and unadulterated from people locked into the land they occupied. Americans were best understood in the context of their places, enmeshed

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in both the built environment (their homes, barns, and towns) and in nature. As historian John Sears puts it: Like Hyde Park, FDR’s model for American democracy, the United States was a network of neighbors tied together by the land, economy and family relationships, and a common experience with deep roots in the past. Kansas and North Dakota were not far off places of no concern to the residents of Hyde Park. . . . [He expressed] a deeply organic sense of the relationships between the land and the people dependent on it for a living and between the past, present, and future.54

Going back to where we began: Roosevelt’s lay theory was that the public was educable and rational. Fully articulated arguments by him would move the public, a causality he stood by firmly. This causal relationship was subject to the distortions of media, hence journalists needed constant attention, wooing, critique, light and heavy mocking, and threats about their access to him, although the latter were rare and delivered by Secretary Early. All told, because the press could contaminate even the most rational, educational, communicative links between president and public, it was essential for the president to keep in interpersonal touch with the people on their land (in their places) as best he could. It is why the letters were so important to Roosevelt and why he wanted them to keep coming despite the press of business and his work overload. It was mostly through letters—­reports from people ensconced in their places as well as face-­to-­face interaction—­that Roosevelt could see for himself the real, textured impacts of his policies, what was working, and what was failing. As Leila Sussmann wrote in 1963, in an analysis of FDR’s mid-­1930s mail, the bulk of letter writers to the president were laborers, farmers, and clerical workers, and much mail was from the poor. We do not know, and will never know, exactly which letters Roosevelt saw and how many. There is no doubt, as reported by many of his staff confidants in the years following his death, that the president read closely a large number of letters from those who suffered most in the 1930s. These were his touchstones. They were also components of a more sophisticated system for understanding the effects of his own persuasion and the chronic “interruption” of his direct communication to the people by newspapers.55

A Note on the Demagogues The most famous agitators deserve more than a nod (and indeed receive it) in the extensive scholarly literature, but when students of history ponder the ways Roosevelt shaped public opinion, they must inevitably contend

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with the great domestic populists of the 1930s. Most are well studied, although their strategic sensibilities and a variety of their choices are still baffling; we can, however, see how many of their irrational behaviors were motivated by excessive megalomania. Roosevelt had the most effective and authoritative bully pulpit one could possibly have, but others on the national scene competed with him directly to speak to, for, and about the public. Putting aside Roosevelt’s detractors in the congressional Republican Party, foes within his own party, as well as those who felt betrayed within his wealthy social network (which were many), two men in particular amassed huge followings of average Americans and extensive media coverage: Governor-­turned-­Senator Huey Long of Louisiana and Father Charles Coughlin of Michigan (the “Radio Priest”). These two men were quite different, but both were homegrown, nonurban populists of a compelling sort, railing against bankers and the wealthy, and advocating for the modest, hardworking American. They could be mesmerizing, so powerful was their command of down-­to-­earth language. Common folk, they argued, suffered in poverty due to greed and the concentration of wealth in the ranks of East Coast elites. The men assaulted the industrial economy and gluttonous industry titans who—­to their minds—­controlled the world of finance simply to add to their personal wealth and power.56 Long and Coughlin separately began as allies—­or hopeful allies—­of Roosevelt, seeking audiences with him and singing his praises in the early days of FDR’s administration. They were largely dismissed as helpful by the president, although he and his administration tried to avoid conflict (public or private) with both. They were worrisome, and Roosevelt saw it: Father Coughlin reached tens of millions with his broadcasts from the Little Flower Church outside of Detroit. He had amassed one of the greatest radio audiences in the world and turned his largely religious broadcast into a political one, advocating for high taxes on the rich, redistribution of income, and regulation of industry. Despite attempts to join the inner sanctum of the Roosevelt administration and his public support of the president in the early 1930s, he became increasingly disturbed by his lack of influence and started his own political party in the face of the 1936 election. Coughlin’s influence waned only later in the decade as his rhetoric became increasingly frenzied, antisemitic, and sympathetic to the dictators of Europe. In 1940, his populist radio show that once reached 30 million listeners was canceled, signaling the end of his powerful role in public life.57 Coughlin lived into the 1970s and continually attempted to salvage his tattered reputation, but Long only lived until age forty-­two, when he was shot by an assassin at the height of his powers in 1935 in the Louisiana state capitol building. Even though he was gunned down early in his career,

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he was already a powerful figure in Louisiana politics and beyond. As governor and then senator, his populist message was similar to Coughlin’s in some ways but different in its framing, which was nonreligious, and echoed Roosevelt in ways resonant with the New Deal itself. Long declared “every man a king” and put forth an enormous social welfare program that would guarantee all Americans cars, radios, homes, and jobs. He established the “Share Our Wealth” society and movement with seven principles. Among them were guaranteed old age pensions, free college, a standard wealth guarantee ($2,000.00 per family annually), limits on work hours, and massive taxation of the wealthy.58 According to biographer Richard D. White, Long’s influence was tremendous. By April 1935, Long reported that 8 million people had joined local Share Our Wealth clubs.59 Roosevelt saw the real dangers posed by both men, although in his inimitable style, he was pleasant and nonconfrontational with them and used emissaries to deal with both of them to avoid any direct conflict. The priest and the “Kingfish” (Long’s preferred nickname) would have been greater threats to the control of American public opinion, and Roosevelt’s reelection, had their influence lasted. As much as they tried to shape the public toward their own ends, including a chance at the presidency, neither could reach ultimate success. Senator Long was assassinated before he could expand his movement further, and Coughlin self-­destructed through his own bigoted rages and vocal admiration of fascism. Some have argued that Roosevelt moved farther to the left as the 1930s wore on, but chances are he’d have taken the same tack without pressure from Long. Millions found relief from poverty through the Works Progress Administration, the CCC, and direct aid to combat poverty and homelessness, but the economy was far from repaired. Roosevelt may have made foundational changes in banking, markets, and infrastructure for government assistance, but in the mid-­ to late 1930s there seemed to be no end to financial hardship for many. His fight to provide for the people would need increasing attention, not a step back. Roosevelt had the greatest of bully pulpits, but interesting for our purposes here is that both Coughlin and Long had their own massive constituencies and could therefore speak with authority about public opinion as a general matter. They too received huge amounts of mail from all parts of the nation. They too mingled with friends, parishioners, and neighbors of the South and Midwest from whence they came. Had Long not been killed and Coughlin not self-­destructed, there would have been a fierce battle over who spoke for the national public. It was not to be, but that nonelected authoritarian figures who based their appeals deeply in populism, employing the radio to advantage, could use the backing of public opinion to potentially rise to achieve legitimate elected office weighed heavily on

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Roosevelt. After all, the most dangerous dictator—­with his own masterful talents in the assessment and manipulation of popular sentiment—­was already officially at the helm in Germany.

Roosevelt as Public Opinion Theorist Franklin Roosevelt would have thrown his head back and had a long, signature laugh if anyone had called him a theorist of anything. As intellectually curious, socially convivial, and loquacious as he was, the president was at base a private man, certainly not given to broader statements of political or social philosophy. As presidential historian Stephen Skowronek put it, although socialism, fascism, capitalism, and communism were in the air as paradigms for progress, Roosevelt chose none, staying close to a vague American pragmatism: “No president so fully authorized to change things had ever faced so stark an array of alternatives, and Roosevelt was never so steadfast as in his refusal to embrace any one of them.”60 That said, his beliefs about the public, popular sentiment, and the press are often patterned, and they mattered immensely. He knew his words carried weight and that they would be linked with his imminent action or inaction in all areas. As if foreseeing his impact, he was the first president to build a library for his own papers. This was a controversial act, with some seeing it as a shrine built out of a bloated ego, given Roosevelt’s personal design of the building to be erected in Hyde Park. Roosevelt began designing the original structure in 1937, at the start of his second term.61 He was correct that scholars would want to peruse his papers, scribbled notes, and correspondence for decades to follow, but it also underscores his belief that words are acts themselves.62 A vital component of his approach to public opinion was the characterization of the public and its sentiments as rational; they were listening to information and processing it in logical fashion. Beliefs and assumptions about both the nature of the public and the forces that can distort important president–­citizen communication led to Roosevelt’s obsessive interest in letters, polls, and travels through the countryside to talk with people in their places. It might seem a simple cause and effect with regard to thoughts and associated behavior on the president’s part, but it was rather complex when implemented, as evidenced by the centrality of a vigorous White House mail processing system and the existence of the first in-­house White House pollster. Putting aside the ego of this or any president, he also believed that the president had the unique ability to assess and represent public opinion because of where he stood—­the support he enjoyed, the information he had access to, and the like.63 A look at Roosevelt’s speeches, press conferences, some correspondence (his notes

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were typically brief; he did not keep a diary or write much at all), and the memoirs of his close colleagues in the 1930s yields a few themes in the president’s discourse about the public that call for some attention before we leave him and move to the heart of this book: his belief that a public comes into being through speech acts, his attraction to technological determinism, and his strong conviction that early rhetorical intervention was the only way to shape public opinion. As previously mentioned, from the earliest days of the sample survey, which was popularized by Gallup and others in the 1930s (and is the subject of the next chapter), there was some puzzlement about how to define and measure the popular sentiment. Anyone paying attention asked the basic questions: Is “the public” every person in the United States or citizens only? Why should we trust opinion expressed anonymously? What if people are ill informed about an issue? How then can they opine with little content knowledge? Is there any relationship between what people tell a pollster and what they actually do in the political world? These were the timeless issues for Gallup and academics of the period. It is interesting that Roosevelt saw the difficulties clearly, although he never waged war against particular pollsters (as he did with newspaper publishers) or the polling industry. Roosevelt watched the polls but believed he was the most authoritative analyst of public opinion, one who went far beyond head counting. He was miles ahead of any pollster with his nuance, sophistication, and touch with the common folk. The polls were not a threat because Roosevelt willed his rational public into existence. Polls did not provide some highly accurate truth of public opinion. Far from it, they gave him a piece—­a building block—­to triangulate with other sources often far more reliable in his eyes and certainly more vivid. Letters and conversations with regular folks were vital data, not inferior to magically accurate poll numbers. Roosevelt saw the limits of aggregation clearly. Consequences of misjudging public opinion by relying on polls were tremendous. No need to attack polls, best to take them in with skepticism. FDR’s belief in a wholistic measure of public opinion, in order to bring it (if crudely) into being and to construct it over time, was why he found celebrity populists, and Long and Coughlin in particular, so worrisome. They too were constructing a public in the manner that served their goals and seemed to have tremendous abilities to read the public as well as Roosevelt could. Roosevelt had the de jure authority of the presidency, but “the Kingfish” and the “Radio Priest” were keen analysts of the American sensibility and held charismatic authority in the darkest days of the Depression. They were eloquent in their description and understanding of the peoples’ mass emotional state as they suffered deprivation, starvation, and unemployment. Like Roosevelt, they too could—­rhetorically—­

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try to will the public into existence and manufacture it in ways that benefited their own platforms. All three men perceived that in volatile times, with so much fluidity in national circumstances, with radio’s power, and in light of the new opinion polling, “the public,” “public opinion,” and “the people” were not tightly defined entities or easy to measure. They were moving targets, hazy concepts. (Like Coughlin and FDR, Long had easy access to national networks during the last year of his life, and he used this access to great effect, as he had on radio in Louisiana previously.)64 Long and Coughlin were social constructivists extraordinaire like Roosevelt: all three created engaged, listening, feeling publics where none were before as they understood the force of their own speech acts, and the social manufacture of reality when it came to the vox populi.65 Roving conversation, media (radio or print in Roosevelt’s day), and letters were the president’s premier technologies of choice in order to know America. Radio was a tool for shaping public opinion and it was clearly, in Roosevelt’s view, an interactive one. He broadcast out and America broadcast right back to him, albeit by mail. No doubt he’d have received record-­ breaking amounts of mail in any case, but asking people to write surely intensified the effort. He had started a looping process, for lack of a better phrase, of presidential communication: Roosevelt spoke and urged the public to write to him, which in turn led him to use the volume and type of mail as opinion measures, and in his development of speech prose soon after. It is this establishment of a communicative circle, largely sustained over the twelve years of his presidency, that was novel in his political era. It certainly didn’t always go well, even as masterful as the president could be in his theories and practices of opinion assessment. Roosevelt was stubborn and confident, and it suited a country in need. But at times his generally deft finger couldn’t find the pulse of public opinion. The infamous Supreme Court “packing” incident was a rare instance when the mail supporting the president and the mail opposing his plan were evenly divided, according to secretary Lela Stiles, who compiled mail counts for the president; normally the mail leaned far more positively. As multiple staffers who remember the period recall, the president argued tenaciously that the public was with him on the matter of court appointments despite opinion polls and newspaper editorials showing the opposite. In this case, Roosevelt’s insistence that he knew public opinion through his mail and his conversations with regular folks was a disastrous conclusion, a rare instance of FDR completely misjudging the public mood.66 And he misjudged it in a specific way: the mail had been his effective guide until 1937, and so he became reliant on it. It was proprietary in that only he and his staff saw the letters. So he likely felt as though he had a secret weapon that publishers, reporters, and pollsters simply could not see; he

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had trusted his private feedback. DNC chair James Farley recounted Roosevelt’s reactions to the negativity in the press on court packing. In early April of 1937 Roosevelt said, “All we have to do . . . is to let the flood of mail settle on Congress. You just see. All I have to do is deliver a better speech and the opposition will be beating a path to the White House door.” No manner of speech helped, and Roosevelt lost the court-­packing battle because of a misreading of the public he himself thought he could construct into being. It was an exception to his general success in public opinion assessment, but a fascinating one. Another communication “technology”—­a tool for persuasion of public opinion—­was the early establishment of a library for FDR’s papers. Libraries extend one’s reach and memory into the future; it is a legacy-­making activity that was created in its modern sense and structure by Roosevelt. At the opening of the library in 1941, Roosevelt emphasized that a library is built for the future and is therefore evidence of a democracy that will last. As he stated at the close of the dedication ceremony on the grounds of the completed Hyde Park building: The dedication of a library is in itself an act of faith. To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a Nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.67

We take for granted that presidential papers and libraries exist, but it was a stroke of brilliance by Roosevelt to build one during his presidency; it was a way to underscore the legitimacy of his leadership in a novel fashion and to signal what he believed were his accomplishments. Not all were impressed by this move, seeing it as a shrine by which Roosevelt celebrated himself, yet on the whole it was seen as welcome. (In subsequent decades, Congress passed legislation on the preservation of presidential papers as public property to be protected and available to all.) We might even call Roosevelt a soft technological determinist. Whether it was his radio broadcasts, the letters they inspired and their tabulation, or his creative impulse to design and implement the library as an expressive tool, he understood the use of communication technology (broadly defined) in the realm of public opinion. There is one last note about FDR’s manipulation and creation of the public that deserves attention, and that is his keen sense of time. All politicians know well that time can be friend or enemy with regard to legislative action and most all else. “Timing is everything” in so many realms,

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but few presidents had Roosevelt’s innate sense of how and when to apply pressure to shape public attitudes. Here FDR was masterful, albeit with some obvious failures (court packing was one of several). It is possible that Roosevelt knew of or actually processed some contents of Lord Bryce’s American Commonwealth (1888), familiar to many in politics and popular in the late nineteenth century and into the early twentieth.68 In any case, Roosevelt’s activities in trying to move public opinion fit neatly with those outlined by the Englishman Bryce, a member of Parliament and a scholar of politics. In studying the dynamics of American opinion and media (newspapers back then), Bryce mapped out a four-­step process that resulted in public policy. Theorizing in the late nineteenth century was far less formal than in today’s political science books, but for Bryce, the steps in public opinion development were roughly these: Stage 1: There is an event or public occurrence that is covered in newspapers. People have an initial reaction, but a vague one, since they need to go off to work or other activities.

Stage 2: There is more media coverage—­evening papers appear and party journals clarify their own opinions. Sentiments in the minds of citizens begin to move from the nebulous to the crystallized. Stage 3: Concerted debate and controversy begin, and people are driven further to one side or the other of an argument.

Stage 4: Action is necessary and taken, or not—­such as a vote.69

Roosevelt understood Bryce’s progression intuitively and made it his practice to focus vigorous work at Stage 1 as best he could. He often made the news, using the confidential press meetings regularly to announce turns in policy or pending executive action. The earlier in the process he intervened, the more he could control narratives. He believed that framing the news in its initial form contributed to his success because typically the Washington press corps most often accurately reported Roosevelt’s words or the background information he provided. By breaking the news to the White House reporters in his own personalized manner, FDR could at least get it announced in the papers without interference by publishers. Reporters competed to be first, running out of the Oval Office and into the press room and telephone booths to call their editors.

The Public Roosevelt Made Taken together, Roosevelt’s approach to the radio and White House press corps; his validation of interpersonal communication with regular folks as vital data for the nation; his constant attention to the content, quantity,

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Figure 2.6. West Virginia, 1938. A Polish-­American miner listens. The Golden Age of Radio was about far more than music, comedy, drama, and fireside chats; it influenced the complex natures of public opinion and public tastes, and local and national radio stations were intent on tracking reaction to their programming and advertising. The number of radio trade magazines exploded throughout the 1930s as station owners figured out how best to boost listenership. Photograph Credit: Alamy.

rhythm, and force of letters to the president; and the invention of the modern presidential library were an attempt to imagine public into being on his own terms. He gave birth to a modern public opinion in the 1930s in lasting ways, so novel in his time and still remarkably powerful. I consider the parallels between Roosevelt and twenty-­first-­century presidents in chapter 7, but as we leave the White House and move north to the New York City–­centric polling industry, we should keep in mind

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Roosevelt’s massive impact on the nature of the public as it was understood in the 1930s. With his sensibilities and use of technology, lay theorist Franklin Roosevelt thrived like no president before him, permanently altering the nature of presidential leadership, the social welfare system, financial market regulation, labor relations, and most profoundly, the relationship of people to their government. More specifically, he demonstrated how publics can be birthed, shaped, and then moved by public address and how aggregated citizen correspondence could be used to add color and texture to the nature of American public opinion—­and American character—­itself. By speaking to the public as he did, Roosevelt was forming a cohesive public, one that could be pushed to talk and think in like-­minded ways about the world around them. It worked enough of the time to produce a New Deal and a new president–­public relationship, as highly imperfect as they both were. In many ways, the astounding wash of letters Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt received were for them a version of President Lincoln’s “public opinion baths.” In the turbulent Civil War days, twice a week, for three daytime hours, the public could come to the White House with their ideas, complaints, desire for employment, desperation, or curiosity. Lincoln said: I feel—­though the tax on my time is heavy—­that no hours of my day are better employed than those which thus bring me again within the direct contact and atmosphere of the average of our whole people. . . . I call these receptions my “public opinion baths,” for I have but little time to read the papers and gather public opinion that way; and though they may not be pleasant in all their particulars, the effect, as a whole, is renovating and invigorating to my perceptions of responsibility and duty.70

Like Lincoln, Roosevelt felt that wallowing in the opinions of the common person—­through letters and motor drives through rural Georgia and the Hudson Valley—­was important, even in what had become a far more populous nation than it was in Lincoln’s day. The texture—­the human detail—­mattered to Roosevelt; knowing it and using it matched his own brand of populism. And while perhaps more cynical, the typical officeholder’s or political candidate’s speech in today’s America often includes stories of this or that “regular person” who can be used to make a point about health care or military service (it is a traditional part of the State of the Union address in our time). It’s fair to say that it began in earnest in a modern sense with FDR as he built a public made up of common persons’ voices. Of course, Roosevelt’s particular paradigm for understanding public sentiment and how it might be moved fit the politics and media of his

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day. Remnants surely remain, particularly his mapping of techniques for building a reciprocal communication path between the people and their president. Our most successful presidential communicators since, Ronald Reagan among them, understood how FDR built a relationship with a nation. But some of Roosevelt’s central ideas, like the existence of a profoundly sensible public, seem very far in the past. What a high contrast between Roosevelt’s belief in a sensible public and the lack of basic levelheadedness—­the conspiracy theories, rejection of science, challenge to facts, and general anti-­intellectualism—­we see in today’s public. Any talk of “a rational public” seems near-­comic on many days in 2021, at least. In the next chapter I take up the seemingly apolitical, less high-­minded, and more scientifically oriented methods that pollsters used to create their own preferred public. Roosevelt would die well before polling became a legitimized and common American phenomenon. The president’s unique triangulations as he assessed and persuaded public opinion would die with him, although he planted some ideas that would reappear in a different form with late twentieth-­century social media discourses. After all, social media reflect the powerful texture of common people’s views in a way that polling never can. Roosevelt conjured the public he needed to steer a country out of the Depression, inoculate it against fascism, alter the nature of its expectations for government, and ready a nation for war. Yet during that same momentous decade, pollsters would try to build their own tightly defined meaning of public opinion. Public opinion would increasingly be a commodity bought and sold in the years following the Roosevelt presidency. The public that pollsters conjured was different than FDR’s, but its impacts were powerful then and still are today as we ponder the meaning and impacts of American popular opinion during the critical interwar years.

3 * Twisted Populism

P o ll s t e r s a n d D e l u s i o n s o f C i t i z e n s h i p

I have not happened to meet anybody, from a President of the United States to a professor of political science, who came anywhere near to embodying the accepted ideal of the sovereign and omnicompetent citizen.

Walter Lippmann, The Phantom Public, 1925

Of all the chronic challenges in democratic practice, competence of the average citizen is one of the most vexing and worrisome. If a nation is to be ruled by the people, ultimately, the people had better be paying attention and be equipped with basic knowledge about public affairs, at a minimum. Yet this ideal, as attractive as it is, has been elusive in the United States since the earliest days of our founding. The quandary of meeting anything close to this sort of perfection is bound up with our notions of the public and public opinion, no matter the era: if individual citizens lack the tools or inclinations for effective political participation, the public that they comprise only magnifies the problem. A collective of millions of ill-­informed individuals yields a public that is much the same.1 In the early decades of the twentieth century, even with increasing literacy and the diffusion of magazines, radio, and newsreels, anguish among intellectuals about citizen knowledge levels was commonplace. With more information available in cities and rural areas alike, people had many more opportunities to learn about issues of their day, whether economic, political, or cultural. Yet despite more readily available information, only small segments of the population had the time, desire, or ability to absorb it, as it is in the present day. What is particularly interesting about the 1930s, however, is that two potent forces were suddenly and palpably in play at the same moment, running parallel to each other at times and conflated at others: rising populism and the flow of bountiful political information through mass media. Franklin Roosevelt’s tactics were the obvious place to look for this intertwining of course; he was a purveyor of populistic rhetoric and used print journalists as well as the radio to make connections between the people

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and the information they would need to understand the world around them. FDR, his agents, and his supporters beyond government informed the public in strategic ways that supported the New Deal programs, but at the same time used any and all communication tools to remind people that they were actually in possession of innate knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom that would (hopefully) lead right back to support for the president and his plans. Others using populist rhetoric did the much the same, trying to educate folks toward their point of view but underscoring the naturally superior instincts of the people, in contrast to government policy makers in Washington. But no matter how artful or engaging political speech may be, what people hear, how they process it, and whether they act is, of course, another story. In this chapter I explore how the 1930s saw both populism (in rhetoric, public policy initiatives, and political advocacy) as well as an adjacent, although less raucous, debate about what citizens actually understood about the world. The largely unarticulated question—­how populism could work as a reflex, ideology, or practice without a knowledgeable citizen—­came to the fore during the Depression years and is precisely where the new pollsters, George Gallup being the most prominent, stepped in. Pollsters, who could finally provide “scientific” evidence of the peoples’ desires would fill a hole that wasn’t clearly mapped by populist movements or talk before. That was, I argue here, the root of polling’s success. The people, it turned out, had plenty of opinions—­as many opinions as there were polling questions—­if they were simply asked. When queried about any issue, most people answered, regardless of what they knew of issues. Gallup didn’t intentionally work for populists, for any ideological movement, or demagogue. He was a businessman, as were the other major pollsters of the 1930s and 1940s. Although it was a business, one might argue—­as Gallup did his entire life—­that polling was a tremendous public service to “the people.” Their sensible views could be collected and quantified. Pollsters, as a matter of course, skirted the question of whether those opinions were based on sound information or were arrived at with sustained thoughtfulness. To my mind, Gallup and the pollsters practiced what I call “twisted populism,” riding high on the various forms of populism that colored public discourse in the 1930s while rarely addressing the underlying problem of citizen knowledge (or competence). Proving, through the publication of polls, that the mass of people did in fact have opinions on all the issues was also of tremendous assistance in the eyes of the newspapers, who bought and published survey results. Readers enjoyed seeing numbers about themselves, and it was easy “news” that could be packaged up in attractive ways to sell papers.

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Polling as a practice rested on a paradigm: Legitimate the “forgotten man” of the Depression by polling him instead of waiting for him to vote or to rise up in a more classically expected democratic fashion. Populism, by definition, makes the people the agent—­“the subject” in political theory terms. Polling made them the “object,” ironically, the source of data to be excavated by the nonpartisan pollster. Suddenly, the same elites (e.g., East Coast intellectuals, newspaper owners, advertising firms) who were the demons in populist rhetoric were—­through surveying—­enabling the regular guy and gal to speak. Oddly, elites set the agenda more than ever by designing the methods, channels, timing, and questions of the polls that would enable the common person to opine to their leaders and the world. Hence my notion of “twisted populism.”2 The first place to start in disentangling all of this is with the conundrum of an omnicompetent, well-­informed citizen. So we must set the table a bit. In the 1930s we have the journalist Walter Lippmann, perhaps the most famous mainstream counterpopulist writer of the twentieth century, toiling away to prove that citizens lacked the time, ability, and sensibility to gain knowledge in a way that made their opinions worthwhile. Some argued against this position —­the philosopher John Dewey for one—­but Dewey’s defense of the people paled in comparison to the work and success of Gallup and the pollsters in lauding the vox populi. The real clash in the 1930s over the importance of citizens’ opinions and their value was between Lippmann and the pollsters, not between Lippmann and Dewey, although the latter dialogue typically receives most of the scholarly attention. I demonstrate here how Gallup (and his colleagues, who established their own companies) overpowered Lippmann by distorting his ideas or simply by selling their own more attractive perspectives extolling the democratic promise of polling and the wisdom of the people. Gallup’s twisted populism was enormously successful and lucrative, as is well documented, and the industry thrived for decades to the present day. It all left Lippmann, with his doubts about the citizenry, firmly in the dust. So we begin with a brief tour of some pre-­twentieth-­century American ideas about publics, consider Lippmann’s arguments, and then discover how Gallup used and disfigured Lippmann through his pioneering work in the 1930s. It is helpful to take a look at the kinds of questions the Gallup Organization and other pollsters asked the people. Did these questions demand or assume any sort of knowledge, agency, or activity of the people? What type of data did the queries seek to produce? And finally, in the end, what kind of public was willed into existence in the 1930s through the then-­novel questions pollsters asked? Roosevelt, as we saw in the last chapter, tried to construct his own idealized, seemingly rational

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public for his practical political purposes. How did the pollsters, and the newspapers that carried polls, reconcile the obvious limitations of citizens’ knowledge level with the new human “science,” one that promised to reveal so many varied and important opinions of Americans?3

The Founders, Lord Bryce, and Public Opinion As our American government textbooks make clear to students, we live in a republic with checks on majorities. The men who wrote our Constitution, while generally committed to rule by the people, were more than cognizant of how direct democracy and too much power located in the mass of people could lead to unproductive irrationality at best and tyranny at worst. The democracy they proposed and tried to codify in many documents, letter exchanges, and personal papers could only work with mechanisms for cooling off the emotionalism and volatility inherent in public opinion. They foresaw how irrationality might take on a populistic, dangerous form, even if they couldn’t see how it would manifest itself in coming centuries. And their cooling-­off mechanisms were imperfect and rushed. Hence, the establishment of an Electoral College, which would prevent the citizens of more populous states from dominating our politics, as well as the creation of a Senate to temper the more raucous extremism of the popularly elected House. (Until 1913, senators were chosen by state legislators.) The system of “checks and balances” we all learned about as children is that broader framework the founders developed, again, to address their fear of any one branch of government, and irrational masses, from becoming hegemonic. The most important documents reflecting the early elites’ views of American democracy are the Federalist Papers, a collection of essays from 1788 that embodies the intellectual groundwork for our system of government. James Madison, who would become the fourth president of the United States, wrote Federalist No. 10, an extended discourse on the problematics of public opinion as a governing force. In it, he notes the following: A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-­eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-­operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that

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where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.4

We are prone to factions most certainly. And indeed, fear of division, volatility, and irrationality in public opinion has been a feature of political theory since the ancient Greeks wrote on the matters, parsing the difficulties of self-­rule. By the time Madison and the founders set about writing the Constitution, consensus about solutions to the problems of inflamed passions, self-­interest, ignorance, and mob rule still did not exist. And so the founders hurriedly, given their constraints, made the choices we live with today. Even with those hard-­fought and much-­debated safeguards codified, political theorists, statesmen, journalists, visitors to the United States, and common people trying to form local governments would keep arguing the matters for decades to come. When James Bryce visited and studied the United States in the latter years of the 1800s, he found the questions still wide open. What is the nature of public opinion in such a large nation, with vast, wild expanses of land and such varied state governments and regional cultures? He was well aware of Tocqueville’s concerns about the tyranny of majorities, which was possible in America despite the founders’ checks to dampen them, and he seemed to think that newspapers—­plentiful and cropping up everywhere—­could be at least some sort of safety valve. Perhaps newspapers could constrain or at least tame the volatile opinions by turning them into words for rational debate by politicians and among people. While Bryce traveled and wrote, though, others elaborated on the themes of majority tyranny further, sometimes using frames from the new science of psychology. For example, in 1895 the popular French thinker Gustave Le Bon wrote that no matter how rational the individual, once in a crowd or group they could become enraged and highly irrational in ways that would make it too late for reading or calm debate.5 The mob might be a majority or a minority in a much larger population, but it was irrational and terrifying nonetheless. The point for us is that different observers were concerned about the levelheadedness of people in a democracy. Putting aside institutional checks on behavior and representation of those sentiments, could people fulfill their duties calmly given their passions?6 There was a distinct falling-­off of wide discussion of the matter by the time of the Great Depression. Writers like Tocqueville or Bryce were known among well-­educated Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but their style of observation about our democracy went largely out of fashion as the nation expanded on all dimensions. By the 1930s it was far more difficult to generalize about American politics

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and publics. There was the influx of immigrants, migration from rural to urban areas, a boon in manufacturing, the diffusion of radio, and many other factors leading to a diversification of the public. With such fluidity it became hard to make the broader claims as Tocqueville and Bryce had back when, among other things, African Americans and women were still sidelined as largely irrelevant to the polity. Into this intellectual vacuum, where broad discussion of the public once existed, stepped the editors of the Literary Digest, Gallup, Elmo Roper, Archibald Crossley, and others intent on measuring public opinion. But to fill that void they needed to articulate the existence of a thoughtful public worth listening to —­to create it through both rhetoric and measurement. “The public” had to have some solidity, coherence, and import. Without envisioning a proper public, who would buy their data or see that data as worthwhile in a working democracy?

Populism and Citizen Competence Many falsely believe that populism was primarily an agrarian movement in the United States of the 1890s—­the People’s Party—­when farmers posited that there was an economic civil war in America. It was the rich versus the poor, the elites versus the people—­a clear class dualism. These were not new arguments. The claims about this particular American divide existed decades before, in political outsider Andrew Jackson’s campaign and ascendency to the presidency in the 1820s. That said, the 1890s populism was profoundly sharp in focus, rhetoric, and policy proposals. The People’s Party held close to the easily expressed dualism (us versus them) but embellished it with claims of—­as Richard Hofstadter puts it—­“history as conspiracy” against the people, a belief that there was a better country, destroyed by monied and often secretive interests. Real Americans had been left out of the expansion and the profits born of industrialization, and this needed correction, the 1890s populists argued. Also, the boom in immigration of Europeans to the United States, bringing more mouths to feed as well as foreign habits of mind, was a tremendous threat. Taken together, these forces endangered democracy, which in the 1890s farmers felt they owned, in spirit and in practice. After all, democracy in America was born and evolved in a fundamentally agricultural nation, hence rural people and farmers were its beacons and its interpreters. Populist rhetoric by the 1930s was fairly congruent with both the movement of the 1890s, as well as progressivism and outbursts of radical activity in the early decades of the twentieth century. Although there are numerous forms and flavors of populism across nations and historical eras, I use the word “populist” much like Hofstadter and a variety of others:

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to signify the generalized notion that “the people” are repressed by leaders and elites to whom they are, in reality, morally superior. Populists usually argue, no matter the decade, that the institutions of the status quo—­government agencies, banks, schools—­are profoundly corrupt and cannot simply be reformed. They need to be destroyed (or close to it) and the political landscape wiped clean so that government can be built anew in the name of the people. Through the years, many Americans have found populism (of various sorts) to be a broadly inspiring way to explain and challenge class differentials and inequality.7 Hofstadter calls populism an American impulse or tendency, as opposed to a particular party or tightly argued ideology, and his way of thinking is most helpful given the many varieties of populism. At its base, populist rhetoric invariably comes down to the people as fonts of democracy; they are not dupes for long under any administration or regime. Populism as an impulse and an idea generally does not rely on its adherents to be well informed. Far from it, the premise of populism is that high levels of knowledge or education can be distracting or even dangerous, since they distort reality: citizens have an innate sense of their own best self-­interest and the proper course for society. And they hold this sense without schooling or intellectualism, both of which can undermine the wisdom achieved through work, experience, and—­in the case of late twentieth-­century agrarian populists—­a connection to the land of America itself. President Roosevelt needed to make choices in 1933, but he had already made assumptions about the people. They were ideas evident in his actions and talk during his years in Albany. Eventually he developed an arsenal of persuasive techniques suited to a national public—­ characterizing American life, elaborating the special relationship of people to their government, poking at listeners’ assumptions, and asking them for patience, all the while trying to persuade them as he found them. Although Roosevelt mostly believed in the innate wisdom and good judgment of the collective of citizens, there is little evidence that he saw an engaged citizenry, truly capable of understanding policy matters in ways other than the most general. The president was keenly aware, although he would rarely speak to it in any sustained or public way, that the people were rational but still fickle, and they could be influenced by nefarious forces. Roosevelt was a tactician with his lay theories about the public, as opposed to the intellectuals who pondered the irrationality and emotion of the common person throughout the 1930s. These debates—­which raged while Roosevelt acted—­were fierce. They were articulated clearly in the

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area of public opinion measurement, inside the industries of marketing and public relations, and in the high journalism of the time. By the end of the decade there were winners and losers among the various elite figures who were trying to assess the capacity of citizens and the general public competency in a democracy. By the 1920s and 1930s, the high-­minded debates and worries of Madison or Tocqueville, Bryce, and Le Bon were discussed in the halls of academe but not in the everyday practice of national politics or on the pages of newspapers. A notable exception—­a man who still stands largely alone for the depth and breadth of his writing and concern about mass political ignorance—­was Walter Lippmann, arguably the most influential journalist and columnist of the twentieth century. During his long life (1889–­ 1974) he produced an extraordinary body of work. He wrote on nearly every issue of the eras he spanned, much of it in his syndicated column “Today and Tomorrow,” which was published for decades in hundreds of American newspapers. Lippmann was a founder of The New Republic and had the ear of presidents and statesmen in addition to his role in the development of journalism itself in the United States. Important for my purposes are his two key books on the public and public opinion.8

Lippmann, Dewey, and Phantom Publics In the 1920s, not many had yet heard of men named Gallup, Roper, or Crossley, and certainly not in regard to the state of national public opinion. During these years Lippmann was busy writing feverishly about the fundamental nature of public opinion itself and for the public.9 As a young man of thirty-­three, Lippmann famously argued in Public Opinion (1922) that public opinion itself was not quite the great governing body often portrayed in highbrow democratic theory. The central problem with self-­governance in a democracy, and the challenge to those in policy-­making roles, is that the public is simply not up to the task of true issue engagement. Working democracy relies on an informed public keenly interested in the national issues of great import. In reality, that public is absent. The public was absent in his day despite the horrors of the Great War that might have drawn people to learn more of the political world. And there was no proper public even in the war’s aftermath, which was rife with many economic, military, and political questions of grave importance. Alongside the cathected matter of why American men should die on foreign soil, there were critical debates among elites about taxation, immigration, poverty, agriculture, and the problems of cities, all of it undergirded by the racism and intolerance that was our often muted, shameful national soundtrack. Lippmann argued that the public

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Figure 3.1. Walter Lippmann, 1889–­1974. Few journalists have ever reached the heights of Lippmann, who was both public philosopher and opinion leader for more than fifty years in the twentieth century. He pulled on threads of argument from Tocqueville and Bryce, but unlike those men he could never quite unearth much value in American public opinion. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

was entirely lost in this morass of vital public issues, and highly educated citizens couldn’t keep up either. He observed that few have the capacity to track public issues in a thoughtful way—­there are too many questions, they are too complex, and we do not have enough knowledge, experience, or (vitally) proximity to understand them even in a rudimentary

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fashion. Also, he noted, we tend to be distracted by entertainment and trivial imagery, and public affairs cannot compete. He wrote, “No wonder that the magazines with the large circulations prefer the face of a pretty girl to any other trademark.”10 To boot, media, no matter their diligence, were inevitably biased, full of misinformation (an obsession of the early Lippmann), and ultimately worthless, even to the citizen trying to navigate critical matters. Public Opinion is written with great passion as Lippmann walks readers through the variety of ways that citizens lack capacity for understanding policy matters through no real fault of their own. Near the beginning of the book he gives us the bad news, and he continues on in this fashion, with panache: The world that we have to deal with politically is out of reach, out of sight, out of mind. It has to be explored, reported, and imagined. Man is no Aristotelian god contemplating all existence at one glance. He is a creature of an evolution who can just about span a sufficient portion of reality to manage his survival, and snatch what on the scale of time are but a few moments of insight and happiness.11

In light of the inability of the public to opine in the reasoned, informed ways expected in a democracy, Lippmann offers his solution: a technocracy of experts, who inform policy makers in an objective manner to solve problems. He takes some comfort knowing that the world might be broken down into parts, studied by well-­meaning bureaucrats, and served up to elected officials in ways that make good decisions possible. Not a tremendously satisfying solution to many readers of Lippmann’s first major work on the subject, but an intriguing remedy for the times nonetheless, decades before sociologists and average citizens would begin to worry about permanent bureaucracies and administrative state power. The book was popular; it was a well-­written and succinctly argued, step-­by-­step critique of what Lippmann believed was a naive view of the public in democracy. After the book’s publication Lippmann became even more skeptical and somber, also doubting the ability of technocrats to work on behalf of the common good. In The Phantom Public (1925), instead of expanding on how social engineers or technocrats might smooth the way for the public good as agents of the people, he chose to focus again squarely on the problems of competent citizenry. This was a disappointment to some intellectuals, who were waiting for Lippmann’s elaboration on new forms of expert governing but instead were offered a vague distinction between insiders (who could make decisions well in particular areas) and outsiders (the public, who are primarily spectators).12 In the

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end, Lippmann could never truly give up “the people”; he couldn’t abide by erasing them altogether. So he wrote for them anyway. He devoted his columns to accessible political philosophy, interpretation of events domestic and foreign, his opinions on the place of American leadership in a changing world, and scolding or encouraging politicians on this or that issue of the day. His provocations may not have added up to a proper model of democracy that might be pursued, but his books and countless newspaper columns questioned nearly all aspects of political behavior and the institutions of his time. Writing from a much different perspective was John Dewey (1859–­ 1952), a noted philosopher who had been a working psychologist and a philosopher well before the brash young Lippmann appeared on the scene. The early twentieth-­century “debate” or dialogue between Lippmann and Dewey has been studied so often by scholars across disciplines that a review here is unnecessary, except in its broad outlines. It certainly wasn’t a debate in the sense of direct, sustained disagreement or actual in-­person feuding in front of audiences. The contrast between how the two men saw public opinion was pieced together in later decades as their works were discovered and rediscovered by students of democratic theory and practice.13 Their difference in outlook is often raised in college courses, for example, because the general contrasts illuminate fundamental challenges of public opinion to democracy in vivid and practical terms during the volatile early American decades, before a depression and another world war. Dewey took issue with Lippmann in essays and eventually in his book The Public and Its Problems (1927). In one review of Lippmann’s Public Opinion Dewey praised its incisiveness and brilliance in diagnosing the challenges of public sentiment in a democracy, but like many he was disappointed that Lippmann offered no proper solution.14 Dewey, foreshadowing his own arguments to come, thought that Lippmann dismissed the possibilities of journalism as an educator of the public too quickly. Education, Dewey posited, ultimately holds the solution to the essential problems diagnosed by Lippmann. Citizens naturally become educated, quickly, when sets of issues arise to prominence. It is in these circumstances that thinking publics learn the facts, argue, and become a public. Media help to inform, but it is average Americans doing the work of democracy with each other in conversation that is the key to an informed nation. People come to realize their interests and do the difficult job with each other by sorting out their feelings in many institutional contexts far from the halls of government. In neighborhoods and local gathering places citizens try to reach consensus, and by doing so they educate themselves. Dewey maintained a belief in the possibilities of the democratic

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citizen-­actor, although he yielded to Lippmann that the superpowered, intellectual, engaged citizen is a bit of a fiction in mass society. In all the dense philosophical writing by Dewey there is much practical guidance as well, which I take up in chapter 7. Although these books and essays were read in the 1920s and 1930s, they were still based largely in theory and anecdote about the public and public opinion. Lippmann went about his business as one of the most powerful and authoritative voices of the twentieth century and as a writer and advisor to the most highly placed government officials, and Dewey holds a firm place in history as a philosopher but also as one of the most eloquent and vigorous advocates for civic exchange, journalism, and education reform. He was more hopeful than Lippmann without question, but Dewey recognized the limits of citizenship in a nation that was only becoming larger, more complicated, and more diverse. Important for our purposes is that both men wrote from a place of some certainty, that is, public opinion was nebulous. It was entirely elusive for Lippmann, but slippery and difficult to pin down in Dewey’s eyes as well. Neither could foresee what the 1930s would bring: a group of men who introduced the authority of social science to the meaning and measure of public opinion. Lippmann was active during the early rise of polling so he could judge the new head-­counting industry (and dismiss it forcefully), whereas Dewey did not live long enough to see polling evolve. In any case, the debate about public opinion changed dramatically with the advent and excitement of the sample survey (i.e., the “scientific” opinion poll). Hence, the important contrast between Lippmann and Dewey faded, overshadowed by the promise of new technology that might concretize “public opinion” once and for all. Lippmann carried the torch of the more skeptical American founders and did so with flair. But it was in the clear financial interest of others in the 1930s to build up the notion of a citizen—­common and decent, certainly capable of understanding policy matters, opinionated, and ready to be engaged as needed. Formal education mattered little. The rational, articulate, populist hero may have been ridiculous to Lippmann, but it had arrived in many forms in the 1930s, in literature and in film. Westerns of the period (and into the next decades) often portrayed a lone man against a lawless posse. Our hero is often rough and courageous, but he has a wisdom derived from the hardscrabble living out west and not from formal education. This near-­religious belief in the common man’s abilities, so attractive in the 1930s, could not have been farther from the deficient citizen Lippmann wrote about so powerfully. But the paradigm, Hollywood’s particular blend of populism and individualism, was in the air and would fit perfectly with the rise of opinion polling.15

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Portraits of a competent, engaged citizen became essential for anyone wishing to appeal to people and to move them to thought or to action. No one likes to be insulted, and whether the persuader of the 1930s was a pollster hoping for high response rates or an industry set on selling consumer goods and films, the public resonated with respect, not with Lippmannesque insult. Whether elite professionals—­in the advertising offices of Madison Avenue, the halls of Congress, or in the film studio offices of Burbank—­overestimated or underestimated citizen proficiency was beside the matter. That depended on the issue at hand and the population in mind, for certain. The important point is that those hoping to query or move the public absolutely needed to construct the notion of a coherent public for that very public. It was during the Depression era that the public was made concrete, fleshed out as a quasi-­institution even if not a branch of government. The notions of both the public and public opinion were reified—­made real and solid. The component parts of these reifications would serve many industries and populist-­leaning politicians as a profitable approach then, as it does now, in our own time.16

Gallup’s New Way of Populism The practice of counting individual opinions as effectively and efficiently as possible emerged as an industry and also a subfield of social science in the 1930s.17 But despite the accelerated surveying in advertising and market research, in government, and in academe, George H. Gallup stands out in rather dramatic fashion. The story of his rise is well known, and there were other successful pollsters coming up at the same moment as Gallup, such as Elmo Roper and Archibald Crossley; they too went on to establish successful firms. But Gallup was bold, flashy, and eloquent in his many columns and essays, so he led the public charge for the new science of measuring opinion. A few scholars, myself among them, have tracked the early years of the polling industry and argued that pollsters—­as social scientists and entrepreneurs—­brought the modern notion of “the public” into being. My goal here is to flesh out how and why it happened and, in later chapters, how it was reinforced and sometimes altered in popular culture, by radio, and in other arenas of social life. In the process we can see how surveying brought some order to what was a chaotic political moment of the 1930s. Pollsters helped reconcile the tension between citizens’ real, empirical deficiencies and the attractive, potent imagery of a wise and thoughtful American people. As David Moore describes Gallup in his wonderfully vivid story of early polling, Gallup was both a thinker and a doer.18 He earned a doctorate and became a college professor before moving into the advertising field

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as a researcher and salesman of poll data. As a young man Gallup had a keen academic interest in what newspaper readers were most interested in and how to measure that interest. The queries eventually drew him forcefully toward the industries of journalism and advertising—­fields that welcomed more systematic approaches so they might better appeal to readers and sell papers. Years before Gallup and his tiny new American Institute of Public Opinion (later, the Gallup Organization) made predictions about the 1936 presidential election, he was trying to change the newspaper industry by writing up his results for the central industry magazine Editor and Publisher. In 1930, for example, he immodestly explained his method in an article titled “Guesswork Eliminated in New Method for Determining Reader Interest.” The Gallup Organization would continue to refine these techniques, which evolved into a lucrative business over the decades that followed. As Gallup developed broader interests in predicting human behavior, he thought he was definitely on to something after predicting the surprise 1932 election victory of his own mother-­in-­law, Ola Babcock Miller, for Iowa secretary of state (she served from 1933 to 1937). He was among the many professionals in the journalism world who likely found the near-­ constant wild boasting of the Literary Digest to be extraordinarily annoying. Until 1936, although they were not honest about their methods, the Digest had indeed (with some methodological sleight of hand and much dumb luck) accurately predicted the outcome of the last few presidential races. Gallup was out to change all that. In 1936, instead of sending millions of ballots to those with auto registrations and telephones, Gallup used his own new method of “quota sampling” to avoid the biases of using the Digest approach. (His poll appeared in seventy-­eight newspapers across the nation.) Sure enough, in 1936, although Gallup didn’t make a precise prediction, he did predict a victory for Roosevelt, whereas the Digest predicted Alf Landon would win. The Digest was shamed, given how much of the magazine’s brand was associated with the poll, and shuttered shortly thereafter. Gallup had made audacious claims, predicting that the Digest would inaccurately predict the outcome and then offering his own newspaper clients (who had signed up for his services) their money back if Gallup too failed. Thankfully for his budding polling business he succeeded, and would be a pioneer in surveying for the rest of his life. Gallup’s advocacy of polling was everywhere in the 1930s, it seemed. He wrote in industry papers but also for the new academic journal, Public Opinion Quarterly. In an essay for Editor and Publisher on November 14, two weeks after his triumphant prediction, he underscored the revolutionary nature of polling as a reporting tool as well as a technology to aid democracy. These were themes he would expand on over the years, but

Figure 3.2. George Gallup. Other major pollsters got their start in the 1930s, but Gallup was the most entrepreneurial and was the premier spokesperson for the industry. He argued that polling as a national institution would forever inoculate America from the threats of tyranny by making sure the people were always heard by their government. He is seen here in 1956. Photograph credit: Alamy.

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the 1936 success gave him the confidence to write that polls provide a tremendous service to America and have no ill effects. The fact that the Literary Digest predicted a Landon victory, for example, was evidence to Gallup that there is no need to worry about “bandwagon effects,” the notion that publication of polls could actually persuade voters to go with the predicted winner. The successful presidential race prediction sent Gallup into lauding the attributes of his own polling methods and their mass proliferation: We have developed a new machinery for reporting the status of the public mind and the trend of opinion on vital issues. It is establishing a new frontier in journalism by extending the field of reportable news. It may serve an additional purpose and make a distinct contribution to the science of government by recording the views of the nation on an issue at any desired time. Any Congress or Administration need not guess in future [sic] regarding the will of the people.19

Two years later Gallup would become even more expansive in his claims, arguing in Public Opinion Quarterly that polling would finally enable democracy to work as it should. In the essay he tried to make a link between his polling results on the issue of old-­age pensions and rural votes for Roos­ evelt. He had no way of proving this link, hardly causal with the evidence he had, but it didn’t stop him from arguing that polling predicted political outcomes (election results, advocacy for legislation, Roosevelt’s policies). He admitted that some voters are uniformed about the issues, or even stupid, but quotes Theodore Roosevelt, who said that “The majority of plain people of the United States will, day in and day out, make fewer mistakes in governing themselves,” than their leaders.20 Gallup’s confidence ran high in the mid-­1930s, culminating in a book with Saul Rae, The Pulse of Democracy, that was published in 1940. In the book Gallup argued even more vehemently that polling would not only enhance democracy, giving leaders to tools they needed to follow public opinion, but that it would be America’s defense against the kind of dictatorships of Germany and the Soviet Union. He noted that in tyrannical states like Italy, public opinion is entirely unknown because even the most basic form of opinion expression—­vote totals—­was likely a sham. (Dictators such as Stalin and Hitler bragged that their electoral support was above 99 percent). Gallup himself, and polling as a practice, received appropriate criticisms, namely that surveys simply measure a moment in time, that opinions can be nebulous or uniformed and therefore useless to leaders, and that the type of questions asked and how they are asked will affect results.

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But still Gallup went out on rhetorical limbs, so much so that he distorted James Bryce’s work, arguing that polling was just what Bryce had in mind for understanding public opinion. Bryce died at the age of eighty-­three in 1922, so he did not and could not have advocated the opinion polling that Gallup and others established. That didn’t stop Gallup, who in a particularly aggressive misrepresentation actually wrote—­in his column published in at least twenty-­five daily newspapers in 1935—­that “Bryce Named Poll as Best Opinion Test.” Using quotes from The American Commonwealth, where Bryce underscored the need for better understanding of public opinion than referenda or infrequent elections could provide, Gallup claimed to have found all the answers in constant surveying.21 While Gallup turned to Bryce’s work as a justification and legitimation of polling, he dismissed Lippmann without much thought. In The Pulse of Democracy, Gallup and Rae argued that newspapers, “glib party leaders,” movies, and radio had begun to diminish the public. The voice of the average person in the United States had become muted with others “speaking in his name.” And this is why, Gallup and Rae write, “Walter Lippmann in his search for ‘public opinion’ found only a ‘phantom public.’” Polling, coming to the rescue, can bring the common man and his opinions to the fore once again, as in some apparently past but not specified golden age (“old equality of participation”). Polling would provide a highly effective “new instrument” to channel opinions from people to their leaders by keeping a finger on the public’s pulse.22 Gallup simplified Bryce’s views and projected what a deceased Bryce might have thought. By contrast, Lippmann lived many decades after the first polls were introduced in the 1930s and he was searing in his disdain for surveying, calling out Gallup in particular. He would write in 1955 that the results of a poll were hardly useful in extended and involved policy debates. They could be helpful in starting arguments, perhaps, but not in providing sage answers to the conundrums one finds in nearly any issue debate of importance. Members of the public can be polled, but then there must be time and space for interaction, for them to learn more about the issues, and for policy makers to make their own arguments about the public good and what is possible through government action. For the remainder of his life Lippmann would never really get an answer to his critiques, certainly not his most serious one: that Gallup and others who speak definitively about a public are creating delusions of an active public full of informed and capable citizens. And given that the public cannot realistically proffer thoughtful opinions on evolving issues and policies, what good are polls except in the sport of predicting election victories (something of lesser interest to Lippmann than governance of state or nation)? If the goal of governance is to formulate strong policy in the

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public interest, what could the aggregation of superficial, fleeting opinions contribute? Lippmann wrote that people surely deserve representation but polling won’t make it happen: The Gallup polls are reports of what people are thinking. But that a plurality of the people sampled in the poll think one way has no bearing upon whether it is sound public policy. For their opportunities of judging great issues are in the very nature of things limited, and the statistical sum of their opinions is not the final verdict on an issue. It is, rather, the beginning of the argument.23

Lippmann’s fundamental critiques of polling would live on in various forms to the present day. Still, polling and survey research have generally triumphed for their sheer attraction (America loves a contest) and the authority of quantification. Polling became a hegemonic force in the measurement of public opinion, building legitimacy with each passing year. As Gallup foresaw, numbers would prove to be magnetic for American newspapers, readers, politicians, and many others.

The Ways of Authority Pollsters of the 1930s and subsequent decades had the power of numbers on their side, something that often protected them in arguments against critics like Lippmann. Quantification, with its seeming precision, as well as the ability to lean on the already well-­established authority of science, were powerful tools. The hard sciences (or positivism, more broadly) were and are the model for polling: you have a set of hypotheses or questions, you collect data and then you interpret the results. Although it’s never quite that elegant, and there is much interactive work—­revising hypotheses after data analysis, collecting more data, and so forth—­numbers are generally commanding and weighty.24 They certainly were in midcentury America. While those surveying in the academy had time for reflection and extended debate, men of the 1930s and 1940s like Gallup, Roper, or Crossley had clients to please and, critically, a fluid political environment to track. When it came to issue polling and preelection polling work, news value mattered—­newspaper editors paid for data and they wanted it quickly in forms they could publish without trauma. So then, as now (albeit with the additional pressures of a 24/7 news cycle), there was little time for the luxury of thinking, revising, going back to the field if the data looked strange, questioning the premises of survey questions themselves, or pondering whether people even knew enough about an issue to form opinions.

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Figure 3.3. Pollster in the field. Polls were conducted in person, door-­to-­door, in the 1930s and for subsequent decades. In contrast to today, response rates to pollsters were high in the early days of public polling, with Americans generally willing to cooperate with those conducting commercial, political, and academic surveys. Photograph credit: Superstock, undated.

Numbers produced through surveys carry the authoritative glow of the hard sciences into politics and bring a new magnifying lens to the mysteries of the public mind. When you have statistics garnered through counting opinions, they have legitimacy, force and, most of all, usefulness. They seem precise in just the ways we are comfortable with because they communicate a rational, objective, and scientific approach to American sentiment. But the pollster-­versus-­Lippmann “dialogue” about why to poll or not, and how to think about public opinion as a basis for policy, is about far more than science and the legitimacy of numbers.25 If it were merely that—­the power of numbers—­Gallup’s success over critics is still

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not quite understandable. Just as important were the various mechanisms of authority invoked by Gallup and the pollsters. How did they, jumping off the springboard of science, will their own publics into being and twist American populist tendencies of the times to their advantage in the 1930s? For my purposes here, there are three types of authority that matter. One is epistemic, in the words of contemporary philosopher Raymond Geuss; another is de jure (authority granted by the law); and the third is natural or “charismatic,” in the language of the nineteenth-­century sociologist Max Weber.26 Gallup had two of the three, and an approach to claim something like the third, which largely explains why polling flourished and the profound critiques of them did not. He won the debate about public opinion assessment by way of his imagination, outstanding marketing talent, hard work, and most of all by wielding authority in powerful ways.27 Epistemic authority is the sort one gains through study, experience, and expertise. If I am a senior legal scholar, expert in the US Constitution and related documents, I have epistemic authority. So in seeking my opinion it would be in your interest—­assuming you were not a legal scholar in the same area—­to defer to my interpretation of the Constitution. This would be a voluntary deference, as I could not command you to listen to me or to heed my counsel on constitutional matters. Gallup managed to have tremendous epistemic authority in the 1930s, and the Gallup Poll was a powerful brand then and now because of it. There is the obvious: He used “scientific” methods, and the impressive nature of numbers, which seem hard facts. But also, critically, he polled often—­weekly in the early years of interest to us—­and used the voice of expertise, as we’ll see in the textual analysis of polls below. It all boosted his role as a skilled professional. One gets the sense in reading his columns and writings that his knowledge of the public mind ran deep and wide—­that he had a near-­magical perch far above the day-­to-­day political wrangling over the New Deal, Prohibition, and all else—­hence he seemed experienced in the political world.28 In 1935 the first Gallup polls were published weekly with fanfare by scores of newspapers who purchased them. Gallup’s American Institute of Public Opinion was persistent in how it underscored the scientific nature of their enterprise and how popular his polling had become. In an early display of Gallup polls, published by the New York Herald Tribune, Gallup writes the following under the headline “Facts Are Gathered, Not Interpretations”: “The policy of the American Institute of Public Opinion in reporting weekly the sentiment of the American people on issues of major importance is to confine itself strictly to facts. . . . Government offi-

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cials, leaders of the opposition, editorial writers, political commentators, economists and citizens in general may interpret these facts about what America is thinking as they see fit.”29 Although not an elected official or judge, Gallup—­by constant reporting of public opinion—­built a close adjacency with de jure authority. It went this way: the public has constitutional authority through the ballot box, but there is no mechanism for assessing what the public thinks or wants between elections. Gallup was actually supplying that between-­elections voice, the vox populi that he thought the founders would approve. Representation of the people’s voice needs to occur daily, in Gallup’s imagined democracy, but elections happen so infrequently. If congressmen or senators are to represent us they must have a running tally of constituents’ opinions, so Gallup aided them by fulfilling their lawful roles as representatives of the people. Gallup had no legal authority but argued that he was—­polling was—­ essential for those who lawfully ruled. Along these lines, Gallup insisted that polling was actually more than a useful tool adjacent to and critical for legislators and presidents: surveys simulated elections, hence their importance as a democratic tool. As he put it, a poll is a “national election on a small scale.” He never provided a logic for this—­why rough election simulation might make sense in democratic practice—­but it wasn’t really necessary. After all, he was trying most of all to create interesting content for editors around the nation, content that would sell papers and advertising.30 Gallup and the pollsters had, without question, a third sort of authority—­what Max Weber called “charismatic authority.” Weber wrote that a charismatic leader is imbued with supernatural persuasive qualities that make people follow even though there is no legal reason to do so, nor a threat of force. Weber was thinking about prophetic movements and was writing primarily about charismatic leaders of a divine sort, who are perceived to have spiritual or religious powers. But the concept has been more useful when we think of it as leadership that compels people to follow or shapes their mind-­set about particular issues. In this sense it is not “brainwashing” or cultish, but closer to Geuss’s sense of a tremendously persuasive individual, a figure we lean on to define problems and solutions in the world around us. In cases of charismatic or “natural” authority, I follow a leader “because there is something about him or her that positively and attractively impresses and reassures me.”31 It is not a stretch at all to note that the early polling entrepreneurs had this sort of authority, putting aside their epistemic (scientific) authority or their role as adjuncts to the de jure authority of lawmakers. Although multiple early pollsters were strong personalities, Gallup had a special talent for public relations—­challenging (or trolling, we would say in our times) the

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Literary Digest and boasting about his success. It was gentlemanly, but flamboyant. Finally, and well beyond claiming authority through scientific method, Gallup proclaimed that the advent of polling would make the unscientific work of historians unnecessary and irrelevant; historians could simply look to polls to understand people of the past. And polling would be predictive of the future in ways that historical work could never be. Although it is difficult to rank Gallup’s audacious propositions, this particular one is worth highlighting for its staying power. Historians never stopped writing history, but it is the case that even today many social scientists and journalists find it easiest to look at past polls to understand public opinion instead of analyzing primary sources or perusing the work of social, cultural, and political historians. Gallup’s 1935 view appeared in the Washington Post under the heading “New Kind of History Recorded in Surveys”: With facts presented here, a new kind of history can be written beginning today. Historians of this era will not have to reconstruct the thoughts uppermost in the public’s mind from stray facts. They will have first-­hand evidence from the only reliable source—­the people themselves. . . . In addition to seeing clearly the state of the public mind today, thoughtful readers will find in the results a preview of tomorrow’s legislative and economic trends. What America thinks today decides what statesmen do tomorrow.32

The survey was about the most efficient form of historical work on Americans’ thoughts that Gallup could imagine, and apparently newspaper editors had no particular problem with the claim, hence their publication of his rhetoric. Gallup was generally brilliant in how he interspersed data and his claims of authority for the method and his own institute, but positing that polling could replace historical research was one of his more aggressive claims. It is the surveyor’s job to wrest opinions from the brains of everyday folks, transform them into numbers, and record them for the history books. This was unambiguous and to be lauded—­finally, we could write proper history and tell the real American story.

Close Reading: How Poll Questions Shape a Public A key place to look for Gallup and his colleagues’ authoritative attempts to construct a coherent, pollable national public in the 1930s is at the polls themselves. Data from opinion polling in the 1930s and 1940s is not particularly reliable, even if one believes that definitive “public opinion” is

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the aggregation of individual opinions given to a stranger in confidence. Some contemporary social scientists have attempted to correct for the many biases of early surveys, and that helps. For example, political scientist Adam Berinsky has conducted heroic work in trying to weight the results of surveys by matching the samples that Gallup and other pollsters used with census data from the period.33 In the early years of polling, interviewers would spread out through small towns and cities with assignments to interview a certain number of women, men, farmers, professionals, and others within various category specifications. But it is likely that interviewers might have avoided more dangerous neighborhoods or were in a hurry. This interviewer freedom introduced biases. For example, Gallup’s samples often included far more educated people than census data reveals there actually were in certain geographic areas. Therefore, the 1930s data must be reweighted to reduce that particular bias introduced by the poll taker. Current researchers continue to work on these matters, but in any case the answers are not particularly relevant to my goals here. The questions themselves, however, are revealing because it was the elites—­surveyors, in this instance—­who were trying to define and capture the whole of public opinion, not the respondents who dutifully and honestly answered (or not).34 The best place to start is with the earliest publicly available polls, published in 1935. From 1935 to 1939, Gallup and Roper produced hundreds of polls on a wide range of issues (putting aside polls about Roosevelt’s competence and election-­related matters), from whether Congress should be able to declare war without a national referendum to veterans’ benefits, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (farm subsidies), and compulsory auto insurance. Some of the questions are straightforward and were likely answered with a fair amount of confidence and competence by citizen respondents, such as this one, asked by Gallup of respondents in May 1936: “Should the distribution of information on birth control be made legal?” (70 percent replied “yes” and 30 percent replied “no”).35 Another equally uncomplicated question asked in June of that year was: “Should the power (to regulate minimum wages) be given to Congress or to the individual states?” (56 percent said that Congress should have that power; 44 percent thought it was best left to state governments). The majority of the questions during this period, though, were fascinating in their assumptions about respondents. There are many themes and ways to categorize the queries, but I discern at least five categories of questions that are particularly useful in understanding how the premier pollsters tried to create a solid and opining public on America’s behalf. Polls from this period were conducted door-­to-­door, with between 2,500 and 5,000 respondents in most surveys.36

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The first category of questions were those asking respondents to give opinions on matters that they most likely knew little about. And in most cases, respondents did not have the option of saying “no opinion” or “I don’t know.” I call these clairvoyant questions—­they demanded that one opine on knotty topics, and the questions relied on speculation by respondents. Respondents are never provided scenarios about possible outcomes or impacts of different responses. For example, Gallup’s pollsters asked respondents in November 1936: “Do you think there will be another serious depression?” (67 percent replied “yes” and 33 percent replied “no”). The average citizen would have found this question rather difficult to answer, and there was no way for a respondent to demur, a choice that many—­or perhaps most—­would have welcomed. Gallup often asked tremendously vague questions about political leaders or public officials and their activities, which were also difficult for the average person to parse, such as the following, asked in February 1936: “In your opinion, does politics play a part in the handling of relief in your locality?” At least there was a “no opinion” option, which many grabbed (65 percent replied “yes,” 18 percent replied “no,” and 17 percent had no opinion). In April 1936, one particularly odd question asked about hypothetical international alliances, assuming that respondents had knowledge of hemispheric politics and of the League of Nations (an organization the United States never joined): “Should the countries of North and South America form their own League of Nations?” (56 percent replied “yes” and 44 percent replied “no”). In general, people were asked to be omnicompetent citizens, engaged in national and international policy matters across domains, as well as clairvoyants. A second category of question, created by Gallup to elicit responses that he presumably thought were interesting to his clients (the newspaper editors), asked respondents to somehow place themselves in an alternative universe. For example, in May 1936, pollsters went door-­to-­door to ask Americans: “If there were only two political parties in this country—­ conservative and liberal—­which would you join?” (53 percent replied “conservative” and 47 percent replied “liberal”). In August 1936, respondents were asked this question despite the fact that there was not then and is not now a mechanism for a national referendum of Americans: “In order to declare war, should Congress be required to obtain the approval of the people by means of a national vote?”37 An astounding number (71 percent) replied “yes” and 29 percent replied “no”—­strong numbers for a public referendum process that did not exist and was not even proposed by Congress or the president. In this theoretical world that Gallup had created he included lighter questions, too—­or they seem light to us, at least—­ that put the respondent in a comically godlike role. In November 1936,

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Americans were asked, “Would you like to have King Edward marry Mrs. Simpson?” (61 percent replied “yes” and 39 percent replied “no”). A common tack in this early Gallup polling was the “more or less” question, appearing frequently enough that we can call it a third category. Typical questions were: “Do you think expenditures by the government for relief and recovery are too little, too great, or just about right?” (asked in September 1935). Nine percent of respondents replied “too little,” 60 percent replied “too great,” and 31 percent replied “about right.” Similarly, in December of that year they were asked three questions, one each about Navy, Air Force, and Army appropriations and whether they should be “greater, smaller, or about the same as they are right now.” The results are impossible to interpret because few respondents could have had strong knowledge of federal appropriation baselines or the costs of operations (for some reason, the Air Force seemed most underfunded in the eyes of respondents). Also common in the polling were false dualities, in which respondents were given two straightforward policy paradigms that masked any and all nuance and complexity. In January 1936, respondents were asked: “Which theory of government do you favor—­concentration of power in the federal government, or concentration of power in the state governments?” Then and now, this should at least specify a domain, like taxation, education, or civil rights. Again, it is impossible to transform the results into anything useful (56 percent named the federal government and 44 percent named the states). Gallup careened wildly among these dualisms, with most being simply too vague to be useful to the president, courts, or Congress, even if the queries were entertaining to client newspapers who bought Gallup’s services. An example from May 1936: “Are the acts of the present Administration helping or hindering recovery?” (55 percent replied “helping” and 45 percent replied “hindering”). The fifth interesting category, one I call imperial presidency, is when the pollster creates or reinforces the notion that the president is the most important political force in the country.38 It is a title and a paradigm that Roosevelt and most presidents would have welcomed—­the general idea of an all-­powerful chief executive able to get most of what they want. It was certainly not something the founders supported because they inserted numerous checks on presidential power into the Constitution. But Gallup, by way of his questions, made it a natural and expected way to think about government action or inaction, success or failure. Early interest in how Roosevelt was faring eventually turned into the Gallup Presidential Approval Poll, which the organization has published continuously to the present day. In the first poll, published in 1937, 60 percent approved of FDR’s job performance and 40 percent did not approve.39 Beyond the

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consistently asked presidential approval questions in the 1930s, Gallup asked various questions about Roosevelt’s administration and about legislation that was part of his New Deal set of programs. But it didn’t stop there: If there was any question about whether Gallup was assuming an imperial presidency, this question, asked of respondents in June 1936, certainly disposes of any ambiguity: “Do you believe the acts and policies of the Roosevelt Administration may lead to a dictatorship?” (45 percent replied “yes” and 55 percent replied “no”). One can easily imagine American political discourse where presidential approval was not a linchpin. That might have been healthier, if more demanding. The thumbs-­up or thumbs-­down way of evaluating a president is about as rudimentary and nonspecific as such a thing could be, but Gallup set our course by asking these questions first and then often, guiding generations of journalists, politicians, and average Americans about how to take our own political temperature. The imperial presidency notion—­and our ability to judge that presidency—­was made concrete in the 1930s. Do we, in Gallup’s chronic dualistic thinking, approve of the chief executive or not? The simplicity of the measure is its appeal, but it is about the most narrow, nonintellectual, and fundamentally empty way to judge a president one can imagine. We were likely capable of more in judging our leaders. It makes great sense that such questions about the president as imperial appeared during Roosevelt’s administration because he was approaching the office anew, boosting the number of staffers (e.g., his “brain trust”), and creating other offices reporting to him. The executive branch continued to grow with new agencies, and many of these new tentacles of the presidency were codified into law with the passage of the Reorganization Act of 1939. Gallup’s polling solidified what is now a far more contested view of presidential power than it was in the 1930s, but by polling consistently on presidential approval, Gallup was taking sides. Less-­common questions about approval of Congress, the media, or other institutions come nowhere close to making those institutions imperial. ­Gallup, whether intentionally or not, was characterizing a public around a unitary executive, and to this day fields multiday polls of presidential approval, which are reported constantly by journalists.40 Taken together, these categories of questions helped Gallup and future pollsters of his era create the vision of an omnicompetent public, a wise one that deserved to be polled. It was a public far and away wiser—­ indeed, more clairvoyant—­than Roosevelt had constructed: the imagined public of the pollster could opine on intricate policy matters, divine the future, and judge leaders in a definitive way regardless of information they may or may not have had. Of course the chief executive is the leader above

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all leaders, someone who we are expected to have opinions about. But the crude thumbs-­up/thumbs-­down, nebulous popularity contest Gallup invented has done a disservice to American politics and citizens ever since. It condescends to the electorate because we know that people have more nuanced opinions about presidents, admiring them in some regards but not in others. We see in the 1930s polling questions the bizarre, tangled roots of an odd populism Gallup fell into. He believed fiercely in a coherent public ready and able to opine, yet they needed to be polled scientifically. An uprising or strike might be interesting, but not particularly helpful because only statistically sound samples could actually represent the larger public. And in an odd twist, as omnicompetent as Gallup’s public is, it is presented with the bluntest, most vacuous assessment choice—­approve or disapprove?—­on the leader of the free world. It all amounts to a pretty confused vision of a public where Gallup paints a picture of a knowing populace, often gives them no chance to decline when they might not have opinions, and then at other times, he barely probes at all. Roosevelt had an implicit theory of publics and their opinions, undergirded with intentionality, but Gallup really had none. He pursued a successful shotgun approach in a hurry, prying opinions out of respondents to make news, sell data, and build an industry. During the late 1930s, some sample surveying work was conducted about marginalized ethnic groups, primarily by the Roper Organization for Fortune and by Gallup. Taken together, there are over twenty such questions in public polls available to scholars, a paucity of queries considering that immigrant and refugee issues were so fraught and prominent for decades, even during the period of harsh quotas after 1924. High degrees of ethnic and race discrimination may have concerned the pollsters enough to simply avoid the issues, even as they polled with tremendous fervor weekly and monthly on a huge number of social, economic, and political matters. That said, the questions they did ask are fascinating and reveal the particular frameworks pollsters chose to place around the issues. The responses do not tell us as much as we would like to know, although what they do expose is consistent with the discriminatory biases, race hatred, and antisemitism of the 1930s. What is more intriguing is what the queries signal to respondents and to readers across the nation, namely, how to think about immigrants and minorities at this critical moment as the economy struggled and war in Europe had begun. Then, as now, polling about marginalized others was challenging due to “social desirability” effects—­many Americans were concerned about how bigoted their opinions might sound to pollsters. Survey researchers keep working on the matter but needless to say, in the 1930s there was far less worry

Figure 3.4. “America Speaks.” An example of Gallup’s “America Speaks” package as laid out by the Billings Gazette in Montana on November 15, 1936. Many national and regional papers subscribed to the Gallup service and were then sent data tables, maps, illustrations, and photographs. Editors chose the ones most fitting to the interests of their readership, sometimes adding their own text or photographs to enhance the data display. Courtesy of the Billings Gazette.

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about discrimination toward minorities, so the social acceptability effects were likely much smaller.41 Let us consider three populations that Roper and Gallup thought were of great enough interest to poll on, starting with “foreign people” and immigrants. Questions about ethnic others were primarily asked in relation to European refugees because many were already fleeing or trying to flee to Great Britain and the United States. The earliest such question was asked by Gallup interviewers from the end of December 1936 through the first week of January 1937, and it was framed in Depression terms: “Do you think aliens on relief should be returned to their own countries?” (67 percent of those polled replied “yes,” 26 percent replied “no,” and the remainder had no opinion). There are no polls for the rest of 1937, but the matter is taken up again in 1938 and 1939 and continues to revolve around relief but with the added notion of citizenship. For example, in January 1939 Gallup asked: “Do you think relief should be given to needy people living in this country who are not citizens and have not applied for citizenship?” (28 percent replied “yes,” 70 percent replied “no,” and the rest had no opinion). Pollsters avoided raising the more fundamental questions, primarily about whether the United States had a responsibility or a desire to help, given that “nation of immigrants” was a dominant descriptor of the country at this moment and immigrants faced unique struggles due to the difficulty navigating a new land and fierce discrimination. By framing the question of refugees as a possible danger to Americans by threatening relief supplies and programs, the pollsters underscored not human rights or empathy but the responsibility of the immigrants to take care of themselves. Refugees (there was no real distinction between refugees and immigrants because the focus was on those fleeing the European war) were characterized as a potential burden. Should refugees who are needy, but have not applied for citizenship, be given aid? Most respondents thought not, although the barriers to applying for aid were fierce in any case: refugees often lacked the English-­language skills to make successful applications, didn’t know how to go about it, weren’t in the United States long enough to meet residency requirements, or were concerned about renouncing their home countries in case they were forced to return. That these barriers might dampen one’s ability to apply for citizenship was omitted from questions, so the pollsters were bound to elicit negative responses. After all, who would accept or feed an immigrant who couldn’t even be bothered to apply for citizenship? Refugees were therefore held to an impossibly high standard, and it was reinforced to the public that immigrants—­first and foremost—­might be intent on freeloading and threatening the economy.

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Roper asked questions about types of immigrants and how respondents felt about them. In 1938 there were questions about which “foreign people” respondents felt least or most favorably toward, with Germans and Japanese faring far less well than Brits and Europeans—­Swedes, Finns, Italians, and Russians. We would expect this given Hitler’s harrowing and aggressive activities by 1938, lingering traumas of fighting the Germans during the Great War, and the generally harsh discrimination toward all Asian immigrants during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whether legally excluded (like the Chinese) or not. Roper also polled respondents in 1939 about which immigrants made the “best” or “worst” citizens once they settled in the United States. It was not a well-­designed question because half of the respondents didn’t know (there was a “Don’t Know” option). Oddly, despite the dislike of Germans, they scored the highest in the “best citizens” category, above the English, Scandinavians, French, Czechs, and other Europeans. Italians fared poorly, as did Jews. We have no real idea of how respondents might come to these particular ratings, and again, there was such a poor response rate on the questions as to make the answers useless. But there was likely a relationship between sheer numbers and antipathy (there were more Italian immigrants than other groups, so they invariably attracted more attention). Overall, Roper (Gallup was not as interested in immigration) communicated that refugees and immigrants were difficult to integrate, and one should be concerned about the pressure they would likely put on relief programs. Gallup and Roper were both, however, interested in the Jews—­as exiles from Germany and also because of the threats Jews faced within the United States (e.g., Gallup questions on “campaigns against Jews”). In a question that communicates the possibility that Jews make their own trouble, Gallup asked in the spring of 1938: “Do you think the persecution of the Jews in Europe has been their own fault?” This dangerously loaded question had the potential of reinforcing or creating the idea as worthy of opining about (a whopping 65 percent thought Jews were either “entirely” or “partly” to blame; 35 percent replied “not at all”). Even more brutal in its messaging was the lengthy question asked by Roper the next year:42 Which of the following statements most nearly represents your general opinion on the Jewish question: 1. In the United States the Jews have the same standing as any other people, and they should be treated in all ways exactly as any other Americans; 2. Jews are in some ways distinct from other Americans, but they make respected and useful citizens so long as they don’t try to mingle socially where they are not wanted;

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3. Jews have somewhat different business methods and therefore some measures should be taken to prevent Jews from getting too much power in the business world; 4. We should make it a policy to deport Jews from this country to some new homeland as fast as it can be done without inhumanity.

The responses are disturbing: although 39 percent said Jews should be treated as all other Americans, 11 percent said they should keep to themselves socially, 32 percent said they should be prevented from gaining power in business, 10 percent proposed that they be deported (“without inhumanity”), and 10 percent either didn’t know or refused to answer. These sorts of possibilities—­policies that might prevent social integration, limit business activities, or encourage deportation—­may have been in the air in many communities across the United States. But as with other questions asked by pollsters then and now, surveys legitimate lines of thinking and open up possible policies that the respondents (and hundreds of thousands of newspaper readers) might not have contemplated if not for a poll. Pollsters showed no sensitivity whatsoever to African Americans in the late 1930s, asking offensive questions. In this area respondents were treated to the worst of stereotypes, as if they were legitimate belief categories. Deportation was raised, as with Jews. In September 1939 Roper asked: “Which (group—­racial, religions [sic], economic or social) in our city (county) represents an important problem?” Jews and Catholics scored in double digits (12 percent and 13 percent, respectively), among all the possible problematic groups—­Labor (5 percent), Communists (6 percent), Bunds (Germans, Nazis) (5 percent), and bootleggers (3 percent). But Negroes, represented by “the NAACP,” are seen as a problem by 41 percent of respondents. Following that question about all groups, there are a variety of questions about segregation, intermarriage, and intelligence. In answer to queries, 71 percent of respondents thought “Negroes now generally have a lower intelligence than white people”; 83 percent thought “Negroes should be compelled to live in certain areas either by law or by an ‘unwritten understanding,’ backed up by social pressure”; and 70 percent predicted either “white domination” (43 percent) or “some sort of separate but equal solution” (27 percent), as if the latter were not a form of domination or control. It is important to note that African Americans were among survey respondents for Gallup, Roper, and others who were polling. They were included and often coded by the interviewer as to their race, while there were no codes for other minorities. At least some Roper poll interview forms in the late 1930s had categories for determining income, where interviewers approximated how well-­off their respondents were

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Figure 3.5. Questions about Negroes. A section of an original 1939 survey form used by an interviewer for the Roper Organization on behalf of one of Roper’s premier clients, Fortune magazine. We will never know how honestly respondents answered, but it is likely that the extent of racism was far higher than interviewers captured, since many people were uncomfortable sharing their more deplorable feelings with the friendly interviewer at the door. Courtesy of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, Cornell University.

upon evaluating their houses, autos, and neighborhoods. There were four coding categories, A–­D, and then an additional category, N, which was for Negro. So although Blacks were included in surveys, their ethnicity was called out unlike others, and they were treated as living outside of the economy somehow—­as if their incomes were irrelevant because they

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were so entirely apart from other human respondents. This is generally inexplicable; it made no sense from a statistical or predictive standpoint if one is to do a proper poll. But it made plenty of sense in the context of 1930s racism. No matter how much or how little African Americans earned, they didn’t deserve to “own” their income label as far as Roper was concerned. Eighty years after interviewers fanned out across the nation to query people about their attitudes toward immigrants or minorities, it is difficult to know how to interpret the answers. In 1938 and 1939 and for years afterward, polling questions, particularly on emotionally fraught matters, were rudimentary, messy, and poorly worded as a rule. The large percentage of Americans giving disturbing answers rings true, given what we know about discrimination during the period. And the reality may have been worse on the ground as some respondents hid their prejudices from the friendly poll taker in the face-­to-­face interaction (all of these polls were done in person). In questions about race and ethnicity, we see some of the clearer instances of a twisted populism. Yes, the polls were—­if imperfectly—­sampling the population in ways far more carefully representative than the unsystematic and badly biased twentieth-­ century straw polls or the debacle that was the Literary Digest poll. But the optimistic and populistic refrains of the pollsters were undermined by the heinous questions and categories they used, with so much data published and readily available to the average reader of newspapers and magazines. For the pollsters, democracy was their inspiration but only with regard to native-­born whites; others can be tolerated, segregated, or deported. It was a respondent’s choice, a matter of public preference. Both Gallup and Roper saw it all as a service because it is important to understand prejudice, but they failed miserably in the actual content of questions and by the ways the questions shaped or reinforced existing racism, antisemitism, and anti-­immigrant sentiment.

The Public the Pollsters Built Gallup and his colleagues of the 1930s created a public where there was once a cacophony of voices. In a few particularly interesting and enduring ways, the activities of pollsters in the 1930s coordinated a new kind of public into existence through social science. The first and most obvious, if ironic, is that polling undermined the development of an active public instead of enhancing the notion. Gallup branded his early polls, packaged and sold to major newspapers, as “America Speaks,” a label that implies self-­generated activity—­or some sort of activity. It would have been far more accurate, although less exciting, to call the project

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“America Answers.” What is particularly odd about the Gallup approach, and newspaper editors’ attraction to it, is that America was indeed speaking elsewhere in a more organic manner. To pick the most stunning cases, one need only look to Lizabeth Cohen’s classic book Making a New Deal, in which she documents in extraordinary detail how workers across industries in Chicago found their voices, organized, and shaped their destinies despite huge variances in race, ethnicity, and type of labor.43 Scholars don’t typically compare public voices in this manner—­that is, the public speaking (responding) to polls versus the grassroots expressions of labor. But that is precisely what historians of public opinion, and those who study the history of publics, must do. It is only then that we can see how passive and inadequate polling is as a way to channel mass sentiment, and why so many other methods are needed. One could argue that the people polled might not have spoken at all if not for Gallup, but we have no evidence of that. In any case, pollsters stepped in effectively to take up the chore of communicating the vox populi to those in power and back to the people themselves. Gallup polled weekly for many years, and along with other pollsters he enthusiastically embraced the role of midwife for a new, more scientific, and better democracy. They were, in Wordsworth’s words, “happy warriors” of a suddenly opining America that they themselves orchestrated.44 Did Americans, reading so many polls in regional newspapers across the nation, week in and week out, feel smug now that their opinions were being counted, aggregated, and communicated for the country to see? It is impossible to know, but Gallup turned it into a sales tactic. He went to great lengths to characterize his authority, and in some of his grander rhetorical flourishes he repeatedly told readers that he was finally filling the holes in democracy. There was the false claim that Lord Bryce endorsed polling, and claims that both Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt were hoping for polling to appear as a tool. On Wilson, he asserted (in his inaugural “America Speaks” package) that “Wilson Wanted Guidance.” Although the polling industry was nonexistent and Gallup’s polling was more than two decades away, Gallup wrote in 1935: “In 1901 Woodrow Wilson said, ‘I would rather hear what men are talking about on trains and in the shops and by the firesides than have anything else, because I want guidance and I know I could get it there.’”45 It was hardly an endorsement of sampling and polling, but Gallup felt no compunction about presuming Wilson craved polling as the way to hear “what men are talking about.” A second way that pollsters tried to create a new public was by ignoring a central part of democratic theory and practice: citizen knowledge. Instead of heeding Lippmann’s concerns about the dearth of substance

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in the average American’s opinions and the challenges people face when trying simply to keep up with the issues, Gallup and others avoided the question of competence altogether. It was a major sin of omission, not commission. The pollsters didn’t measure knowledge levels poorly; they ignored the issue entirely. No doubt the pollsters understood the problem, but admitting there was an underlying challenge, a magnificent one, would have undermined the entire practice of surveying. Gallup had to evade these matters, and it is why my phrase of “twisted populism” fits him and his polling colleagues so well. As in so many populist movements, knowledge of policy, detail, and data is beside the point: the people have innate wisdom and somehow understand empirical reality without actually having information or sustained attention to an issue. Gallup took this particular strain from populism, which was quite appealing, and ran with it. People had opinions that they could articulate to a pollster whether they knew anything or not. After all, they chose responses—­they willingly complied. To my mind, Gallup and the early pollsters went even a bit farther than ignoring the knowledge problem and created an alternative political universe through their practices. They built an imaginary democracy, where busy people somehow had opinions worth recording on everything, easily channeled by upbeat pollsters. In this fictional America there was no need for knowledge or study by its citizens because their innate wisdom lay right on the surface. That wisdom must have mattered because newspapers published the numbers in flamboyant fashion. Gallup argued that without opinion polling a demagogue could flourish in the United States. A totalitarian government can erase minorities, but no government can deny the numbers in a published poll. So, by this logic, minorities are always protected. Gallup tied himself in knots trying to defend the notion that information will always win, protecting all citizens. More information about public opinion is the only solid route to take because those with minority views can make themselves heard in the open, fair system of polling: “The real tyranny in America will not come from a better knowledge of how majorities feel. . . . Tyranny arises when the media of information are closed, not when they are open for all to use.”46 It’s odd to characterize polling as “open for all to use” given that pollsters control the questions, the possible answers to choose from, and the respondents’ neighborhoods or social strata, as well as the time, manner, and venue for communicating data. Finally, Gallup and his contemporaries labored in a nation traumatized by unemployment, drought, anxiety, and fear. Could the polling industry have flourished if not for the frightening and heart-­wrenching poverty, suffering, and sheer terror of a crisis without end? Election prediction and

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election outcome wagering were entrenched American traditions, with us from the nineteenth century, but issue polling was a new phenomenon born at the same time as the onslaught of the Depression. Perhaps polling was a sort of comfort: at least someone was recording the unhappiness and the fear. As I argue in chapter 7, the contemporary 2021 American national mood—­also characterized by fear and divisiveness—­has also bred a demand for a public voice. Today the expression is through polls but also cable news ratings, Twitter followings, and social media, but there is again space for the kind of twisted, fervent populism—­twisted by the technologies we use and the corporations that make those technologies available and easy to use. Most worrisome in the 1930s and also today is that leaders look to these warped channels of public expression for strategic direction, and their leadership is shaped by it. Since Lippmann was defeated so effectively by pollsters and polling as a practice, perhaps it’s appropriate to give him the last word here, from 1941: “The notion that public opinion can and will decide all issues is in appearance democratic. In practice it undermines and destroys democratic government. For when everyone is supposed to have a judgment about everything, nobody in fact is going to know much about anything.”47 Roosevelt tried to create a public through all the channels he could—­ speeches, fireside chats, cultivation of journalists, attacks on publishers, and the like. His shrewd and constant assessment of the public opinion environment enabled his most compelling moments of persuasion and his policy victories. Meanwhile, pollsters attempted to will a public into being for their own purposes, for financial gain, prestige, and to be, they believed, protectors of democracy at a critical juncture. These two attempts to shape a public lived side by side, intersecting at moments (as when FDR himself read and used polls), but were also in conflict, since Roosevelt was intent on shaping public opinion, first and foremost, not responding to it as if it were a temperature reading. When Gallup’s polls were close, but consistently opposed to his plan to restructure the Supreme Court (the “court-­packing” plan of 1937), Roosevelt pursued it anyway, a risky approach that ended poorly. That said, one reason so many of us recount the court-­packing disaster for our students is that it was among the infrequent failures of the president to use his typically effective sense of the climate of opinion.

* FDR’s imagined public and the one created by the pollsters were both the product of politically astute, privileged white men, working in their own ways to control messages and questions, interpreting the answers and

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feedback over and over. But other forces in the 1930s were intentionally and unintendedly creating their own sorts of publics. I have written in the past, for example, about popular illustration and film in the mid-­ twentieth century.48 In these cases, cultural products help us understand publics imagined by creative professionals who are looking to sell their ideas and shape popular sentiment while they gain audiences and acclaim. But there are two critically important events in the 1930s that also serve as more complicated “texts” or cultural artifacts about public opinion—­how it was viewed by major American industrial leaders, scientists, and big-­city municipal leaders, as well as architects, artists, and others. So in the next chapter I explore just what we can learn by looking to the 1933 and 1939 World’s Fairs in Chicago and New York, with a focus on the latter. Nearly 80 million people visited the fairs in those cities, and they were the subject of extensive national publicity as well. Given the sheer number of visitors, the diversity of exhibits, the expenditures and ambitions of industry and government figures, and the proliferation of news and information about these events around the world, studying the fairs is imperative. They give us the texture of the times that we must have if we are to understand public opinion and its new meanings that emerged during the Great Depression years.

4 * A Consuming Public

Th e S t r a n g e a n d Ma g n i f i c e n t New York World’s Fair

If we are to understand the history and birth of contemporary American public opinion, brief looks at FDR and the early pollsters are mandatory, obvious starting points. In this chapter I approach the construction of the modern public from a more challenging but equally formidable standpoint: the origins of the contemporary public in popular culture. It is in the 1930s that we see a true fusion of politics and entertainment, of renewed anti-­intellectualism and passivity of the citizenry, and the diminution of science and growing anxiety about immigrants. All of these tendencies and dynamics have been present in some form throughout our history as a nation. But there is no question that the 1930s finally solidified such inclinations, turned them profitable for corporate giants, and created signposts for politicians ever since. We must look at popular cultural artifacts, in fact—­the meaningful events, products, and entertainment programs of any period—­to discern how entertainment worked alongside the more well-­studied efforts by a president and pollsters to forge a public. What makes us laugh and dream, what holds our attention during trying times, and what draws people together with others for pleasure are all intimately tied to the formation of a public. These artifacts and cultural forces shape the texture of everyday life, whether it is the comedy of late night television, pop music, or viral videos on the internet. But it was back in the 1930s, unexpectedly, that entertainment became conflated in the powerful ways that have stayed with us. Just as the printing press—­first in unintended ways and then quite deliberately—­shaped the nature of publics and popular sentiment in early modern Europe, so too did film, radio, sports, and fairs help to form the American public of the 1930s.1 Pleasure and its impacts are awfully difficult to measure, full of internal contractions, emotionally fraught, and resident in our hearts and minds. This is exactly why they matter: how we spend our leisure time is far more revealing than who we vote for, the party labels we debate, or how politicians make us feel. To deny the import of culture, even the seemingly most sordid popular culture, would be a mistake. As so many

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cultural historians have demonstrated, there are few firm dividing lines between our politics and our amusements, between our policy orientations and our frivolities. We have always had many distractions and diversions, not sitting to the side, parallel to electoral politics, but instead woven deeply into our politics.2 This chapter explores how the 1939 New York World’s Fair, a cultural event which, along with its impressive interwar counterpart a few years earlier in Chicago, is a precious window into the formation of the American public. It reflected us and it changed us. The New York fair, with its official motto “The World of Tomorrow,” was a remarkable event, studied by talented social historians but entirely ignored by students of politics and the evolution of public opinion. It is a bit baffling that two fairs in New York and Chicago, which together saw 92 million visitors pass through their gates, could be overlooked. The state government and corporate exhibitions, the scientific displays, the cultural productions, the spectacles representing foreign nations, and the nod to our immigrants were all elaborate and often dazzling. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent constructing these two-­year-­long temporary metropolises, while hundreds of national magazines and newspapers across the nation described, reported, and critiqued the fairs throughout the 1930s. Print and electronic media (radio, film, and newsreels) spread word of the fairs’ central themes, consumer goods, fashion trends, inventions, racial sensibilities, songs, dances, and foods. Yet putting aside the ripple effects of the fairs in our media, the plain fact that tens of millions attended the fairs was astounding. In 1940, a census year, the population of the United States was only 132 million people, so the sheer foot traffic on fairgrounds is unmatched even by Disney World’s annual attendance today. But what were the messages and the political underpinnings of these events? And how can spectacles meant to thrill and entertain possibly be used to understand the emergence of an American public, as an idea and its realization, in the 1930s? A dive into popular culture—­the World’s Fair in this chapter and radio programming in the next—­is inevitable and revealing. The United States has long led the world in areas of mediated entertainment and sheer spectacle: We did, after all, invent all that was radio’s Golden Age as well as Barnum’s circuses, Hollywood, television, Disney, Motown, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. We have always regaled ourselves with amusements, and for much of the twentieth century and into the twenty-­first we have regaled people across the globe as a font of the highest and lowest of commercial entertainment. That our contemporary notion of a public was born during an exceptional decade of mass media developments is not a coincidence. Hollywood exploded in the 1930s with its best movies to date, at a creative and

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technological pace unmatched in any subsequent decade. That the 1930s is viewed today as radio’s most imaginative, open, and impactful decade also makes tremendous sense as we map ideas about the public’s evolution. Anyone interested in politics sees the most obvious linkages—­how Amos ‘n’ Andy affected views about Black Americans, what Frank Capra’s films did to develop particular strains of populism, or what Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 Gone with the Wind revealed about politics, war, slavery’s legacies, and regionalism. Even Dick Tracy comics influenced notions of urbanism, violence, and policing. Decades of research on entertainment media have detailed the ways that these sources—­radio, television, comics, films, and best sellers—­can reinforce existing political attitudes and generate new ones.3 Film and radio mattered in the 1930s, without question, but so too did the events and places Americans flocked to in great numbers for entertainment—­ballparks, festivals, theaters, amusement parks, scouting jamborees, and other gatherings. These were, and will always be, places for in-­person interaction, competition, collaboration, and joy—­all that makes life worth living, for most people. Reminders and objects (artifacts) associated with these places and events are sometimes well documented and sometimes not, but what we do have from the period by way of documentation helps us greatly in thinking about publics. It is vital to climb to a high-­level surveillance of culture in the period by drawing on the relevant and substantial work of historians and sociologists and also by sampling a wide array of cultural items, all with an eye to the birth of modern public opinion. Taken together, the entertainment of the 1930s helped to create and solidify a distinctly American kind of popular culture as a critical component of the political landscape. While governmental actors, the president first among them, shaped the politics of public opinion by appealing to hearts and minds, so did the creators of popular culture and its consumers. In many ways, popular culture of the period crystallized and cemented particular ideas about the American public that fit seamlessly with FDR’s calls for calm and unity, and with the delusion of upbeat omnicompetence Gallup promoted. But in other ways popular culture undermined these agents, often by dividing the public; reinforcing class stratification, nativism, and racism; or simply distracting people from their idealized duty to be informed citizens. Roosevelt was not naive about what thrilled and entertained the public; far from it. But no president controls popular culture. After some notes on the fusion of entertainment and politics, I describe the fairs with some attention to their novel uses of science and public space. Then I home in more intently on the 1939 fair’s teachings to fairgoers, journalists, and so many others: that is, what Americans should be-

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lieve about themselves, about the status of immigrants and minorities, and how they might view democracy of the 1930s itself.

There Was Infotainment Well before Donald Trump In our own time we elected a president who is a phenomenon without compare: a stunning and flamboyant union of entertainment and politics in one man. He embodies “infotainment,” to use an imperfect but generally useful label for this conflation. It’s one thing to be engaging, but Donald Trump is a master of entertainment and uses his skills, perfected over many years of televisual fame, to blur all lines. He is magnetic and captivating to many, and loyalty often follows. He informs (with whatever he wants to communicate, fact or fiction) while he titillates, and the two activities are perpetually conflated in a seamless—­and shameless—­ manner of epic proportions. President Trump is hardly the first entertaining politician intent on grabbing the attention of audiences every day, but he may be the first one we can describe as having engagement and amusement as his highest priorities. One of his most common insults is that someone is stuffy and boring. Being dull is a near-­criminal offense in his keen and media-­savvy eyes. Trump’s particularly compelling blend of entertainment and politics had been decades in the making, although the world beyond his regular television audience had not paid much attention to this ongoing project.4 Where did it all start, exactly—­this fusion of politics and entertainment? There are a variety of hypotheses about this, some arguing that the torchlight parades, songs, slogans, rallies, and energizing events of the nineteenth century were an early mix of sustained amusement and politics. There is a large body of evidence for this argument. Not only do we have newspaper reports, memoirs by political operatives, and wonderful artifacts (e.g., campaign flags and paraphernalia, often humorous), we also have portrayals of political campaigns and election scenes. One of the most famous is The County Election (1852), a painting by George Caleb Bingham, an artist and cultural observer of the nineteenth-­century Midwest. In the painting boys play games and people gamble, drink, bribe, and thoroughly enjoy the corrupt conviviality of the polling place in the days before registration and secret ballots. It wasn’t the only such artistic depiction of campaigns and elections, although Bingham manages to convey the conflation of entertainment, community, brotherhood, drinking, fraudulence, and voting of the period. Others have noted that the campaign to elect William McKinley in 1897 was the first “modern” political campaign, one that involved massive, eye-­catching political advertising on a scale not previously seen. The

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Figure 4.1. The County Election. This 1852 painting of a Missouri election is one of George Caleb Bingham’s masterworks, among several devoted to voting, speechifying, and canvassing in the nineteenth-­century Midwest. There is drunkenness, chatter, conviviality, and bribery, as Bingham (a hopeful politician himself) had no intention of glorifying democratic practice. Voting and politics were central to nineteenth-­century entertainment for white men, with campaigns and elections as carnivalesque. Courtesy of the Saint Louis Museum of Art.

campaign used methods that engaged the public in thrilling ways, blurring entertainment, citizenship, and information.5 It broke new ground for campaigns of the early twentieth century and has stayed with us. Many decades later a well-­known pioneer in understanding media, Neil Postman, worked to parse this intermingling in the 1980s. He posited that infotainment—­in general and not just in politics and campaigning—­ began in earnest with the introduction and diffusion of television.6 There is no question that television upped the ante with regard to how attractive, interesting, and entertaining both campaigns and candidates had to be. But to my mind, Postman comes in far too late; he skipped over the most critical period for the development infotainment, which is clearly the 1930s.7 It was during the Depression era that we saw an uptick in the conflation of entertainment and politics, embodied even in what seemed like antics or a dictator’s vile propaganda—­Leni Riefenstahl’s films of Hitler’s willing crowds in Nuremberg (Triumph of the Will, 1935) or at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (Olympia, 1938). Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds

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radio broadcast in 1938 might have been a creative fictional exercise, but it too demonstrated how the unserious and the serious might be fused in ways that grabbed attention with panache. The union of information, ideology, and entertainment was certainly well entrenched by the time television diffused quickly throughout America during the 1950s. Infotainment is the fusion of data about the world with the words and images that rivet our attention. The term is surely too loose, broad, and greatly overused, but there is no better one yet coined so it stays in our contemporary lexicon no matter the purveyor, type of information/amusement disseminated, or the medium. It is relevant, indeed central to our lives in the twenty-­first century. In any event, if we were to choose a key moment in American history where information—­about politics, other nations, culture, ethnicity, technology, sports, the arts, and science—­and entertainment were brought together in the most comprehensive and stunning ways, it would be, roughly, the 1930s. We call it the Golden Age of Radio, we marvel over it as a spectacular period for Hollywood, and we understand it as a critical moment in the acceleration of modern consumer advertising.8

Spectacles of Infotainment: World’s Fairs World’s Fairs have varied tremendously in form and content over two centuries and across multiple continents. They were first created in Europe to highlight advances in scientific fields; to demonstrate new technologies for industry, agriculture, and households; and to bring widespread public attention to host nations. Early fairs, sometimes called “expositions,” were dominated by the display of technology from across the globe to encourage trade, investment, and further development of applied scientific endeavors. There was a continuing French exposition, eleven distinct events, from the end of the eighteenth to the mid-­nineteenth century, called the “Exposition des Produits de L’industrie Française.” At these fairs, exhibitions included textiles, chemicals, precision instruments for measurement and calculation, agricultural equipment, pottery, dyes, musical instruments, looms, and a huge number of other innovations and products for manufacturing, science, and homes. From modest beginnings fifty years before, the last event in this exposition, in 1849, had nearly six thousand exhibitors. That event was enormous and saw the introduction of products across display categories, a closing speech granting awards by President Napoleon III, and wondrous items we take for granted but that changed the soundtrack of human life itself, like Adolphe Sax’s new wind instrument.9 These early fairs focused largely on technology displays and served as inspiration for many others across nations and decades. Gatherings were

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emblematic of accelerated industrialization throughout the nineteenth century and represented a new sort of national pride that was rooted in invention. A most spectacular exposition, often considered the first comprehensive World’s Fair, was the Great Exhibition in London, held in 1851. The fair, organized by Prince Albert and others, and attended by luminaries of the period, had as its formal name “The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations.” Its centerpiece was an immense structure of glass and steel called the Crystal Palace, a magnificent architectural achievement at the time covering nineteen acres and standing three stories high. The square footage and the height allowed for a number of ninety-­foot-­tall elm trees indoors, as well as one hundred thousand exhibits from around the world.10 An estimated 6 million people visited the Crystal Palace and the grounds of the fair during its six open months, and it was a profitable venture. Exhibitions included products, inventions, and designs across all fields of human endeavor, and the American contributions were fine examples of enthusiastic participation. Inventors and salesmen came from nearly all parts of the United States to show their wares, from musical instruments to calculators and all manner of measurement devices. Among the names and exhibits were I. Newton (Philadelphia) and a “Sample of Indian corn,” C. A. Brown (Boston) with “Specimens of teeth,” W. Brady (New York) and a “Kedge Anchor,” and A. A. Wilder (Detroit) and his “Revolving cylinder-­engine and leeway indicator, with fog whistle for lighthouse stations.” There were less technical and more whimsical booths as well, such as works of art, samples from the natural world, and foodstuffs, like Miss Maxwell (New Jersey) and her “Autumn Leaves” or G. Borden (Galveston, Texas) and his “meat biscuit.”11 The first major American fair took place in New York, just after the London event. This 1853 fair was set up in Bryant Park, in what is now midtown Manhattan, and would foreshadow the much larger New York fairs in 1939 and 1964. The 1853 fair also featured a crystal palace, although smaller than the London building, as well as a giant wooden tower—­the Latting Observatory—­which at the time (before it burned down) was the tallest structure in the city of New York. There were four thousand exhibits at the fair, an event designed to reflect the ambitions of the young city and nation, with President Franklin Pierce present at the July opening.12 The 1893 Chicago Exposition is well studied, and rightfully so, given the millions of visitors and breathtaking displays of architecture, manufacturing and household inventions, fine arts, and entertainment covering nearly seven hundred acres. It established an entire amusement area adjacent to the exhibitions, and fairgoers enjoyed the first Ferris wheel, the first movie theater, and even the first evening football game. The

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amusement section was wildly popular, and visitors could see artificially constructed ethnic enclaves (e.g., the African village). There are two surviving buildings from this astonishing fair, now the Museum of Science and Industry and the Art Institute of Chicago.13 The fair was considered a major success, a moment when the city stepped onto the international stage as a beautiful and successful metropolis. It accomplished all stated goals but ended in tragedy (a smallpox epidemic, the assassination of the city’s mayor, and major fires).14 The next major fair of interest was the “Century of Progress” World’s Fair, also held in Chicago, during the summers of 1933 and 1934. It was constructed in the same celebratory spirit as the successful 1893 fair on Chicago’s south side, but this time the fair’s organizers built a site closer to the city’s business center on Lake Michigan. Although planning for the fair began before the 1929 stock market crash, and despite the difficulty raising money (the 1933 fair was privately funded), building the exposition took on even more importance as a ray of optimism in the early years of the Depression. Like the Chicago fair forty years before it, the 1933 fair was ambitious in its architectural vision and exhibits, drawing around 39 million people over two summer seasons. Like the previous American fairs, it included new inventions, anthropological displays (highlighting “primitives” from other nations), and many amusements, including the infamous Sally Rand striptease with ostrich feathers (her “Fan Dance”)—­ there was something for everyone. An outstanding aspect of the 1933 event, however, was the centrality of the basic sciences (in the Hall of Science) that enabled visitors to learn about a variety of disciplines. To underscore its inspiration, the motto of the fair was “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Adapts.” The fair’s organizers sought and received endorsement and a partnership with the National Research Council, and this close collaboration yielded a science advisory committee to guide the character of scientific presentations at the fair. Inside the hall were exhibits and hands-­on displays about mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine, including a transparent replica of a human body and real cross-­sectional pieces of body parts and organs. Lenox R. Lohr, general manager of the 1933 fair, wrote a sober and detailed account of “The Century of Progress” years later, outlining challenges and successes. He noted that visits to the Hall of Science were thirty times greater than visits to the Midway (the entertainment area).15 This headlong plunge into science, which was quite extensive, would fall off in subsequent world’s fairs, as I explore below. Yet it represented a dramatic victory of the American scientific community in persuading elite city leaders about the importance of the basic sciences as an undergirding for progress itself instead of simply presenting practical technologies and instruments.

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Although science played a great part in the 1933 fair, there was always some tension over both the basic science and applied scientific displays through to the end of the fair in the fall of 1934, including debate over what people were really capable of understanding. This foreshadowed the more intense struggles in the New York fair to come. Some observers noted that Chicago fairgoers reacted more enthusiastically to exhibits that demanded public involvement. So, for example, the marketing guru L. Rohe Walter, who studied the fair, gave this advice to companies wishing to attract fairgoers to their inventions: dumb it down and let people play. He congratulated Standard Oil for dropping their exhibit and film about “the contributions of oil to industry” and instead sponsoring “a den of ferocious tigers and lions” that brought to life the company slogan of “Live Power.” The president of Standard Oil would write stockholders in 1934 that they should visit the fair because their exhibit now drew 2,500 people an hour, who enjoy live power with the “unusual trained animal demonstration.” Walter puts it baldly, emphasizing the cognitive challenges of the public and the persistent interest in good-­looking women: “The trouble with too many officials responsible for selecting exhibits is that they are too clever, too intelligent. They overlook the educational limitations of their audience—­the millions who buy two-­thirds of all our goods and whose incomes are $2000 or less per year.”16 He continues: “Wilson’s [a pork producer] bacon slicing machine with a corps of auburn-­haired beauties wrapping bacon, will hold the same crowd for a half-­hour at a time, where a purely mechanical demonstration would get a minute’s glance. Sunbeam’s potato peeling Mixmaster exhibit has three pretty girls on individual revolving stages that are worth a dozen robots.”17 The Chicago fairs were successful beyond what planners hoped and put pressure on other cities to prove their competence in pulling off such feats in order to extol the virtues of their own cities.

A Look to the Future: The 1939 Fair It is fitting that the 1939 New York fair, themed “The World of Tomorrow,” was held on what was an enormous, 1,200-­acre ash heap in Queens (a neighborhood called Flushing Meadows–­Corona Park). A gleaming city literally rose from ashes. The fair’s founders and champions—­a group of highly placed New York businessmen and municipal leaders—­hoped that the event would boost the spirits of a nation battered by economic hardship, inspire Americans to dream of an imminent and glorious future fueled by technology, and bring tourism dollars to a city that badly needed a major economic revitalization. New York was a meaningful eighteenth-­ century American historic site, but the stock market crash of 1929 left an

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indelible symbolic mark on the city, one of irrational speculation, greed, and destruction. The World’s Fair was an opportunity to reintroduce the city to the world, focusing on all that was good and hopeful. It was an event meant to calm a democratic country that watched with horror as European nations fell to dictators and rising authoritarianism. Americans had learned from the gruesome nature of the Great War how these events could affect our own population and our own progress. Worries of being drawn into a European conflict once again were top of mind, and the fears of such an intervention were solidly perched in the memories of millions. So any celebration of American ideals would be attractive, as we continually tried to reassure ourselves that democracy indeed was worth the trauma and bloodshed. The 1939 fair was devoted to lifting Americans and their spirits out of the gloom, celebrating unity and symbolizing contemporary peace among willing nations, a new twist on the nature of these sorts of expositions. It would propel the city of New York and enable the great American companies to reinvent their images and introduce (or reintroduce) consumer goods for a new day. Automobile manufacturers, for example, had struggled through the 1930s, with sales of new cars in the early years of the decade dropping precipitously by 75 percent; half of the companies that produced the cars shut down.18 These companies threw themselves into the 1939 fair planning, hoping to rebuild their industry and reinforce the centrality of car travel to the American way of life. Beyond automakers, scores of other American companies, entertainers, and politicians shaped or reshaped their brands through the fair. It was in many ways a gargantuan focus group, enabling the persuaders to figure out what might work for sales to the larger population long after the fair ended. Both the 1933–­1934 Chicago World’s Fair and the New York World’s Fair five years later have been studied by a few outstanding historians, Robert W. Rydell being one of the most insightful.19 Some have analyzed the exhibitions of great American manufacturers (e.g., General Motors, the Ford Motor Company, General Electric, the Eastman Kodak Company, the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, E.I. DuPont de Nemours, United States Steel, and Bell Telephone and Laboratories), while others have assessed the exhibits set up by sixty nations, the unique modernist architecture of buildings throughout the fairgrounds, and the large number of amusements. As with previous fairs, the 1939 fair included dance performances, aquatic displays, costumed shows, and feats of strength and speed, with an extensive undergirding of racism and misogyny behind the fun. I depend on much previous work on the fair, in addition to the extensive archives of the fair held in New York. Taken together, primary documents and historians’ explorations make for a compelling narrative of how the fairs

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reflected the nature of the public itself, both real and imagined. There was a deep and broad effort to tout the fair, and so it was constantly explained to America; the publicity department for “The World of Tomorrow” was tremendously active. By his count, researcher Michael Mullen notes that 19,171 radio stations across the nation listened to more than 700 broadcasts from the fair, while 16,585 theaters showed more than 180 newsreels about the fair. And there were well over 12 million column inches devoted to news from the Queens fairgrounds in newspapers throughout the country.20 As noted in chapter 1, before his untimely death in 1985, the distinguished American historian Warren Susman was just beginning to spell out the relationship of the 1939 fair to the creation of a public, the theme of this book. He noted: “The stress on unity, cooperation, interdependence, harmony [in all the fair rhetoric]—­all relate in important ways to a general idea of the people. . . . Thus the Fair, in the eyes of its planners, proposed not only to invite the people, but to create the people in the most ideal sense of the concept.”21 The fair could establish a people, even if it were a by-­product of planning activities. The years before the fair’s opening were not exactly a time for philosophy about our identity, but a frenzy of architectural design, fundraising, international travel to attract exhibits, transportation logistics, and convoluted political work with the city and labor. Planners had an interest in the themes of democracy and science, but primarily to use them as framing devices and narration for the heavy consumerist reality characterizing the fairgrounds. Not much remains on the grounds of the 1939 New York World’s Fair today. As with many fairs, the buildings in Queens, though massive, expensive, and elaborate, were destroyed, as were the statuary, pavilions, gardens, pools, roadways, and transportation structures (e.g., trams, landing strips, elevated trains). These days the fairgrounds—­now Flushing Meadows Park—­are peaceful parkland overshadowed by nearby Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, as well as the venue for the US Open tennis tournament. Few who remember the fair are still living, so the imposing physical plant of the spectacular 1939 fair lives on through photographs, a few amateurish short films, oral histories, memorabilia, planning documents, organizer and participant correspondence, news articles, and architectural renderings. These artifacts help us reconstruct how dramatically the event presented, and indeed sold, an American public in those hopeful but apprehensive late Depression, prewar years. The fair certainly speaks to our day forcefully and creatively as well, because although it was an event meant to teach, entertain, and sell, it also—­ unintentionally and crudely—­built a prototype for a fully realized “public” that would sustain through time.

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The economy was fragile and foreign conflict loomed in the mid-­1930s, but a fair of great magnitude must begin—­as all World’s Fairs did—­with a cheerful, forward-­looking vision. Fair planning commenced in 1934 as a group of New York businessmen pondered how to repeat the success of Chicago in their own town. They quickly raised $40 million in private investment, a stunning figure for the time, and the city invested nearly $27 million, much of it to build the infrastructure and facilities to support major building projects on the site.22 The New York fair was designed to help Americans dream of a technological future that would enhance democracy and peace, so there was incessant talk of utopias and of the way invention would entertain and improve humanity—­but there also was fun, with thrilling rides, magic shows, and much nudity. Hoping for a successful fair with regard to profitability, attendance, and publicity, the informal group of city fathers decided on the charismatic Grover Whalen—­snappily dressed mustachioed businessman, town celebrity, official city “greeter,” public relations man, and briefly New York police commissioner—­to be the president of the World’s Fair Committee and the public face of the fair. “Mr. New York,” as he was known, poured all of his flamboyant energy into the event, which began with a groundbreaking in 1936, much enthusiasm, and a lot of skepticism about the chosen piece of real estate. As Whalen put it in his memoir, “Flushing Meadow was a dispiriting three-­and-­a-­half-­mile stretch of no man’s land. . . . It was half tidal silt and half refuse, crisscrossed by streams of ooze. Nothing grew there.”23 After much planning over the following three years, participation from the many nations who built pavilions and from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s city government, and through the mighty investments of major American companies, the fair opened on April 30, 1939, a spectacle of the sort never seen before in the city. Gleaming, magnificent new buildings bedecked the former Queens wasteland, most built in the new style of modernist architecture. At night, complicated and elaborate light displays thrilled crowds and made the buildings even more interesting, with their streamlined designs and curves. Exhibits of all kinds, grand statues representing American ideals, new foods, unusual midway acts, and the technological marvels made for impressive grounds in Corona Park, no longer a dump but now a window into the future with the Depression in the rearview mirror. The best way to describe it is a cross between Disney World, Epcot Center, a typical state fair, a multistage music festival, and the Consumer Electronics Show of today, all held on a 1,200-­acre park with lagoons, dramatic landscaping, and boulevards that enabled tens of millions to weave in and out of one magnificent building after another. You could come back to the fair, day after day, and not repeat

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your experience unless you tried with all of your might. So many exhibits were intriguing for their promise of convenience and happiness, like the houses and kitchens of the future. Other exhibits, like the first television set, drew puzzled crowds: Some visitors wondered why there was such a fuss over a camera capturing a scene in one room then projected into another. What did that mean for the future, exactly? The physical and thematic focal points of the fair, which were also its symbols, were two giant connected structures: the Perisphere and the Trylon. Both were so large that they could easily be seen from upper Manhattan, miles away. The Perisphere was a 19-­story globe with a 180-­foot diameter that held a utopian future city diorama called “Democracity”; the interior exhibit space was about twice as large as Radio City Music Hall, which seats about six thousand people.24 The 610-­foot-­tall Trylon stood next to it, and there was a massive ramp that allowed visitors to move from one to the other in an orderly fashion. Both the Perisphere and the Trylon were names concocted by the fair’s brain trust, who hoped to underscore their original design and unique import in the architectural world. These two buildings were the chosen symbols for the fair as it was presented to the world beyond New York in fair publicity posters, etched into souvenirs, and printed on fair stationery. The fair’s tens of millions of visitors clamored to go inside the Perisphere (after a ride on the longest escalator in the world at the time), where they could stand on moving balconies and view Democracity from all angles. It was by all accounts a splendid display for its sheer size and design, foreshadowing by decades the more sophisticated dioramas that we see today, such as the giant Spaceship Earth at the Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida. The fair, kicked off with a speech by Albert Einstein, a grand light show, and much fanfare, was divided into enormous “zones,” each associated with different themes: the Production and Distribution Zone, the Food Zone, the Government Zone, the Transportation Zone, the Community Interests Zone, the Communications and Business Zone, and the Amusement Zone. In the Food Zone one could eat almost anything, and also visit the corporate displays of Borden or Heinz. The Communications and Business Zone housed companies in that industry including RCA, which debuted the first television set, and U.S. Steel, Eastman Kodak, General Electric, and other major manufacturers set up giant exhibitions in the Production and Distribution Zone. Popular in the Transportation Zone was the Ford Pavilion, with a racetrack on its roof and drivers showing their talents continuously. General Motors sponsored “Futurama,” an enormous model of the modern city of 1960 that could be viewed from a “carry-­go-­round” that seated passengers. One hundred fifty cows grazed in the Food Zone, and ten thousand people could fit into the Aquacade of the Amusement

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Figure 4.2. George Washington at the opening of the 1939 World’s Fair. This colossal, sixty-­one-­foot-­tall statue of President Washington occupied a central place on the fairgrounds in Queens, New York. The fair opened on April, 30, 1939, the 150th anniversary of Washington’s inauguration in 1789 at the Federal Building in lower Manhattan. The statue was dismantled when the fair ended. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.

Zone, where synchronized swimming was illuminated by light shows and enhanced by huge waterfalls. The Government Zone showcased the many exhibits built by sixty nations to show off their customs, dances, music, arts, and foods.25 And the Community Interests Zone was a hodgepodge

Figure 4.3. The Trylon and the Perisphere. The gleaming white Trylon and Perisphere were among the numerous spectacular structures of the 1939 World’s Fair. They were the official theme buildings of the fair and were reproduced on documents, posters, postage stamps, dishware, souvenirs, and clothing. Both buildings were designed by Wallace Harrison and J. André Fouilhoux. The Perisphere was 180 feet in diameter and the Trylon was 610 feet high. Photograph credit: Alamy.

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of interests and products, including the Home Furnishings Building; the House of Jewels, featuring gorgeous diamonds, gems, and other valuables from major luxury retailers; and the large Schlitz Palm Garden for beer and relaxation. While the fair focused on the future, it began with what became a fleeting celebration of the past. Opening Day was April 30, to commemorate that same date in 1789 when George Washington took the oath of office at Federal Hall in New York’s lower Manhattan. Fair planners believed that a reenactment of Washington’s journey from Mount Vernon to New York would build interest, so they hired actors dressed in eighteenth-­ century attire to take the same route on horseback and carriage up the East Coast, through Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and eventually to Corona Park. The entourage was well covered by media, and enthusiastic groups greeted “President Washington.” There were a few bumps in the road. For example, historian Michael Kammen describes some protestations about a lengthy stop in Washington, since there was no such city in 1789. And naughty students at Princeton yelled impolite comments to George Washington, while rumors swirled about a possible “plot to steal Washington’s coach.” Despite the arduous journey and minor incidents, the publicity stunt for the fair worked out well and an estimated 3 million people greeted Washington as he rode up Fifth Avenue showered by a ticker-­tape parade.26 In one of many oddly postmodern moments, Washington was taken around the city with journalists for photo opportunities—­to landmarks like Radio City—­to be shown the skyscrapers and what America had become. Wasn’t he surprised and impressed with the way the republic had evolved, with a great metropolis, home to millions? At the fairgrounds, President Roosevelt opened the festivities along with Einstein. FDR was the first president to appear on television, although there were only a few receivers in the city. Reporters joked that there were two presidents in New York on opening day, and although Roosevelt left Flushing Meadows and the Washington reenactor went on to other jobs, the giant statue of President Washington would preside over the fair for two years, from start to finish. It was an extraordinary, gleaming-­white, sixty-­one-­foot-­tall figure built by the sculptor James Earle Fraser. Washington was placed near the Trylon in a way so that past and future were juxtaposed, easily captured in photographs. Washington’s inauguration in New York was a fitting frame for the fair, but not simply as a stirring patriotic reminder of our founding. It also reflected the general desire for unified politics and a unified American folk culture. At the time, politicians, artists, playwrights, and a band of other intellectuals, local community leaders, and journalists pined for a nation that was whole and cohesive, with symbols known to all. As Kammen notes in

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evaluating the elite talk of the period, opinion leaders from many walks of life “pleaded for a national culture during the interwar years.”27 Such unity seemed vital for modernity and it would move the country past memories of the Civil War, still fresh in the minds of citizens of both the North and the South. With memory and culture front and center in the 1930s, there was an intense attraction to dramatic pageantry to commemorate anniversaries of battles, birthdates, train routes, signings of the Declaration of Independence across states, and the like. So the look back to President Washington at the fair was in keeping with a powerful desire, a deeply populistic one, to find shared, proud, easily recognized representations of Americana. That purpose was well served by the first president’s imposing figure greeting fairgoers; it was difficult to argue that Washington was anything but courageous, unselfish, bent on national cohesion, and pure of spirit. He was a mystical figure, unassailable, and therefore his enormous concrete presence at the center of the fairgrounds reminded all visitors of their common heritage before they wandered the displays of technology, life-­changing appliances, and dancing foreigners.

The Challenge of Fairground Science Back in 1933, the “Century of Progress” fair in Chicago had made science a major attraction, with an enormous Hall of Science and floors of exhibits on biology, geology, mathematics, chemistry, and the like. The Chicago exhibits were planned by leading scientists, most of whom were well connected in government, military, and industry circles. Hundreds of additional scientists were involved in creating the exhibits, led by a particularly talented sort of entrepreneur-­advocate for the sciences writ large. Overall, the Chicago exhibitions were wildly successful, teaching millions of visitors that science is a deity of sorts, a natural projection of mankind of the highest and most lofty order. Science, the 1933 fair underscored, was objective, democratic, and vital to the future of man and nation. Social science was a part of the fair as well, although reflective of the provincial, nonchalant racial superiority beliefs of the times. For example, anthropologists from Harvard University built an exhibition about the progress of man and how he had advanced by setting up an “Indian Village.” In the village, five groups of Native Americans representing their five tribes put on dances and ceremonies to entertain fairgoers and show them the primitive yet joyful origins of modern man. It all seemed to fit perfectly with the “Century of Progress” fair theme. As Robert Rydell points out, the Chicago fair planners underscored the importance of the scientific method in moving America forward during

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the Great Depression through invention and production. Records from the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) show that “From the start, the science exhibits were intended to exemplify ‘the idea of scientific and industrial unity’ and to inject ‘system and order’ into the exposition and, by extension, into American culture as a whole.”28 The emphasis on science, and the advocacy of science as critical to the nation, continued at the 1939 New York fair, although there was far more tension between organizers and scientists and within the scientific community itself. Fair organizers argued that science was threaded through all of the industrial exhibits, so a stand-­alone science hall might not be necessary. Scientist leaders insisted on it. They were, however, forced to find independent funding for the exhibits in a period when federal funding for science had faltered, all of this despite the grand opening featuring Albert Einstein. The change from 1933 to 1939 was reflective of a broader national battle scientists were fighting. Many American politicians and others were skeptical of science, blaming scientists for the technological displacement of American workers. Was science helping us through the Great Depression, or was it a driver of mass unemployment? Despite the assaults on science from well beyond the 1939 fair, science managed to find a place there. Still, fair organizers worried that the crowds might be bored. So while many scientists bristled at it, planners insisted that the most effective way to advocate for science was its integration into the corporate exhibits, demonstrating how basic scientific principles underlie technology. Ultimately, this led to better consumer products, speedier and safer transportation, and more effective medicines. Overall, scientists kept some place in the fair but lost the battle to promote and popularize science without commercial implications and the hawking of products. As Peter Kuznick, the premier scholar of science at both fairs, points out, science was most often either mystified as a magical force with light shows and other brilliant displays or made important because it served consumers: Many exhibitors drew large crowds by displaying futuristic machines. AT&T introduced Voder, a synthetic-­human-­speech device. Borden demonstrated its automatic cow-­milking Rotolactor. RCA, GE, Westinghouse, and Crosley provided many with their first glimpses of television. Westinghouse also offered Elektro, a colorful robot who smoked cigarettes and walked and talked on command. . . . DuPont unveiled its synthetic wonder fabric “nylon,” “lucite,” and “butacite,” a plastic whose elasticity made it ideal for safety glass. Kodak paraded its latest generation of cameras; Goodrich, its canvas shoes, rubber raincoats, shower curtains, and gloves.29

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Most interesting for our purposes is that science at the 1939 New York fair was intentionally presented as an engaging and amusing form of human inquiry and curiosity, primarily a consumer-­oriented one. Unlike the 1933 fair, which had a more extensive pure science set of exhibitions, science just six years later was forced to take a backseat to manufacturing triumphs. As Rydell puts it, in contrasting the fairs, the New York organizers were confident that they could present any necessary science through the corporate displays, thereby pleasing everyone. Industry leaders—­ whether in reaction to scientists’ complaints or simply based on their plans to explain, boast, and market—­made the exhibits as interesting and involving as they could. They hoped that adults and children would have a great time, that science would be fun, and that everyone would associate their brands with excitement and wonder. Rydell notes: “The scientific message was so pervasive that it soon reached self-­parody in one midway show, the congress of Beauties, where Yvette Dare [the burlesque dancer] had trained a macaw named Einstein to remove her bra at the sound of tom-­toms in the neighboring Seminole Village.”30 Unlike the 1933 fair, the public wasn’t really allowed to decide for itself whether basic science bored them or not, since the decision was made for them. The public that the fair organizers assumed and elaborated was one that needed amusement to be pulled into the scientific endeavor. They weren’t capable or interested in dull demonstrations or scientific lectures. Rather, they needed action and titillation, circuses not pedagogy. The assumption about what a public is capable of and the reinforcement of that assumption would be ingrained in corporate culture for the longer term, but we see some of its clearest origins in the 1930s. The decline of basic science as a central achievement of mankind was quite stunning during the few years that passed between the Chicago and New York fairs, and this reflected how difficult scientific advocacy was more generally in the United States at this pivotal moment. Scientists have always needed to explain and advocate for financial support, for government funding, and for public attention. Basic science takes money (and a lot of it) for staff, laboratory space, equipment, conferences, and the like. The 1939 fair alone did not put science on the back burner in American politics and culture, but the approach to it on the fairgrounds normalized the importance of application over pure inquiry. As Kuznick noted in 1994, long before a reality star–­turned–­politician became the forty-­fifth president of the United States, the 1939 fair represented “a culture thoroughly infused with both business values and commercialized mass entertainment, in which public discourse would increasingly take the form of entertainment or show business.”31

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A note on technology is useful here in light of the heavy engineering focus—­applied science—­at both the Chicago and New York fairs. The Chicago slogan could not have made the role of science any clearer: “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms.” This tidy, linear approach is interesting in how it put science at the start of the equation but then dismisses it, as if, when a technology is invented, science has made its contribution. The reality is that technological invention is an iterative process and science is present throughout most application processes: scientists glean data from application, which feeds back into new basic queries. According to the fair slogan, while science is vaguely foundational, out there discovering, it is simply a springboard to what matters more—­the dishwasher, the television, or the new and improved milk production process. It is a technological determinist argument, pervasive through the 1939 fair and quite formidable. Technology will, on its own power and due to its effectiveness, set us free—­free from exhausting, unfulfilling work, free from the generally disheartening nature of toil. This could not have been a more welcome message in the 1930s when America was so deep in the despair of the Great Depression. People looked for hope, and the fair organizers gave it to them in the form of machinery that would change their lives, acting as an independent and powerful force for good. Putting aside leaders and institutions, who inevitably disappoint, technology is a wonder. At the 1939 fair, the future was reintroduced: the new air conditioner would keep us cool, color photography would better preserve our precious memories, fluorescent lamps would brighten our houses and stores, and the facsimile (the fax machine) would send our documents around the world.

Democracy and Democracity While the Chicago 1933–­1934 fair was named “A Century of Progress,” it was forward-­looking as well, but not nearly as wildly ambitious on this dimension as its 1939 successor, “The World of Tomorrow.” The New York fair was far more ideological and powerfully themed in hopes of financial success and to show off the bigger, more stupendous nature of what they viewed as the greatest city in America. New York had to be larger in footprint but also in ambition. Yet since it occurred later in the decade, a decade of so much volatility and change, the 1939 fair was bound to be more complex. The Depression had been long, grueling, and still unresolved. The Great War had not remedied the political problems in Europe, and by the time of the New York fair Americans had seen autocracy abroad in the rise of new dictators as well as the homegrown authoritarian

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and nativist demagogues best exemplified by Father Coughlin. Simply put, the stakes were higher in 1939, with far more economic, cultural, and political water under the bridge since the Chicago fair. In particular, more questions loomed about what democracy was and could be. Could democracy even survive as a form of government that would also provide for its people? For all the bravado of the New York fair there were creeping worries as well, and the fair seems an argument, a counterpoint to tyranny. The fair’s financiers, managers, designers, and writers were among the most sophisticated men of their day and knew quite well that modernism had a gloomy side. If they were to bring glory to New York, make money, and serve the public’s need for entertainment and easily digested education, they would have to go over the top by way of sheer exhibit size, technical marvels, and gleaming new consumer goods. Poignantly, there was even a grand display of advanced incubators for infants, which included the struggling babies themselves, watched over by cheerful nurses. The “Incubator Baby Institution” was the sort of technology that would, in the most basic, humane fashion, protect the future of the American family. Taking care of other Americans, even the tiniest and most vulnerable, was a collective activity in keeping with the fair’s themes of unity and interdependence on each other as well as on machines.32 Although spectacular exhibits were abundant at the 1939 fair, there was simply no more important venue representing the entire fair—­its meaning, message, and architecture—­than the Perisphere. This enormous steel structure was built as an architectural marvel and also to house the massive Democracity. Visitors were treated to a wonderful score and light show as night eventually descended on the model city.33 The Perisphere itself was created by the architectural firm of Harrison and Fouilhoux, which also built the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. The model, dismantled after the conclusion of the fair, was created by Henry Dreyfuss, the great industrial designer of the period. Dreyfuss was an obvious choice for a prestige project like Democracity because he had been a leader in theatrical design and was accustomed to creating dazzling design and inviting audience engagement. (Dreyfuss would go on to many decades of productive design work and would be responsible for a diverse array of items, including the round Honeywell thermostat, multiple Hoover vacuum cleaners, the Princess telephone, John Deere tractors, the famous 20th Century Limited Steamliner train, and even two steamships.)34 Democracity—­the model and the idea—­was a magnificent creation, albeit full of fantastic notions about America, technological impossibilities, joyful naivete, and appeals to the highest motives of men and women. The

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fantasy city, home to around 1.5 million people, was a circular one, with business, government, a major hospital, and a university all located at the center. There were a variety of ring roads around it, along with rail lines and highways that ran from the center to the outskirts. People lived either several miles from the center or farther out in the country, where there were farms, light industry, and fields. All residents, whether closer to the urban center (“Pleasantville”) or farther out, had local schools, shops, and services. Dreyfuss and the planners pointed out that all future cities, when built in reality, would be a bit different, but the general idea should be the same if Americans were to achieve the ultimate spatial expression of contented human existence. Everyone had speedy access to the center city, as well as greenery, parks, and shopping nearby. A dam supplied electrical power, outlying farms provided food, and everyone would feel as though life was an efficient and satisfying existence. The city worked because of remarkable—­albeit unexplained—­technological advances and, vitally, a spirit of interconnectedness. If man only realized how important unity and interdependence was, anything—­certainly a wonderful, comfortable lifestyle—­was both possible and probable. The central document describing the exhibit for journalists and the public was written with panache and the lofty, high-­minded exaggeration of the 1930s by Gilbert Seldes, an accomplished writer/critic of the era who had a hand in many public-­spirited projects of the interwar period.35 His description of Democracity and its goals and ideals reflected the modernism of the time as artists, city planners, fiction writers, and so many others envisioned a future that would be determined by technology, speed, industrial design, mass media, and the like. Seldes wrote in an overly excited style, describing the pleasantness and satisfaction that comes from waking up in a gorgeous, green suburban place that is without traffic, that has low taxes (because services are so very efficient), and that is also entirely safe for adults and children. It is “For the Use of the People,” in the rhetorical style of socialist realism. After describing Democracity as a sort of utopia, the pamphlet reads: If Democracy were Utopia, government would be superfluous. But Democracity is an entirely practical city. . . . And there can be a dozen or a hundred such groups of towns and villages and centers in the United States, each with commercial and agricultural and industrial interests. The government exists to see that these interests harmonize. A farmer in Texas has a good crop . . . he buys a tractor from a company in Iowa . . . the foreman of the nightshift gets a bonus . . . he can afford to give his wife money to straighten their little girl’s teeth . . . the dentist orders a new unit from Philadelphia . . . and a Philadelphia family buys three more print dresses

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made from Texas cotton. . . . Multiply the process ten million times over and you have prosperity.36

The focus on technology was one carried throughout the fair, particularly in the industrial exhibits, but it was in Democracity that so many advances in applied science were pulled together into a governmentally planned city for living. The fair’s organizers encouraged visitors to see the Perisphere early in their visits because it laid out how so many machines, gadgets, and consumer goods they would see across the fairgrounds would become integrated into a fully realized place for happy human living. In the official description of Democracity, a possible failure to achieve American unity is vague and ominous, with a reference not to economic depression but to the dangers of despotism. Readers were told about the city model: The men and women who live in the town and cities you see down there [as you look at Democracity from moving balconies] as well as those who live in the surrounding country on the farms or around the distant mines and mills—­they represent a hundred and thirty millions of us—­learning to work, to play, to struggle, to sing together. If we do not learn quickly, the World of Tomorrow will not come into existence. The World of Today and Yesterday will be destroyed by men who do not believe in creative humanity—­by tyrants who command slaves—­and no new world will be built in its place. One side is the World of Tomorrow built by millions of free men and women, independent and interdependent. . . . On the other side is chaos.37

Overly dramatic for sure, but Democracity itself was a pointed argument: threats to democracy had been defeated in the Great War but loomed large again in 1939. American entrance in the European conflict, while a few years off, seemed unavoidable and only a unified populace could weather it again. We certainly can’t write off the exhibit or the fair simply as ham-­handed, naively optimistic attempts at futurism. The fair’s founders, investors, and corporate leaders were among the most sophisticated men in America at the time, scions of great families, titans of industry, communications pioneers, and experienced statesmen—­men like Winthrop Aldrich, Nelson Rockefeller, Edward Bernays, Henry Morgenthau, and David Sarnoff. They were well aware of the darkness beyond the fairgrounds, authoritarian threats both home and abroad, and a still fragile economy. They saw a bold look to the future as a public service, a boon for a city and American industry more broadly, melded together in a patriotic, prodemocracy spectacle.

Figure 4.4. Perisphere cutaway showing Democracity. The City of the Future, designed by Henry Dreyfuss, was one of the most popular and important theme exhibits at the fair. From moving walkways, visitors could see the city from all angles. A recording of dramatic music and narrative about American life in the future played over and over for the millions of visitors who passed through it during the summers of 1939 and 1940. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.

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Figure 4.5. A view of the fair. This photograph gives us a good sense of the fair’s scale with the Manhattan skyline visible as a backdrop. Support from New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses was critical in the choice of fairgrounds, and he shrewdly saw it as a way to use public funds to transform a vast, long-­standing ash heap into a public park after the fair closed. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.

Their hopes and beliefs about the public, and what the public might pay for, created the complex ideological web that was the 1939 World’s Fair. Democracity represented nearly all of these strains, so it is the artifact that reveals the most about the way the fair reinforced particular ideas about the public and public opinion. Americans at the fair were told what the public should be and why, that their best hope was in a comfortable future, planned by industry and government, and free from both the poverty of economic downturns and the horror of dictatorships. Democracity sent a clear message to visitors and to America at large, but one in keeping with the tenets of the New Deal. Americans needed to  work hard and to be industrious, to take care of their families, and to live peacefully with their neighbors. Urban planning for democracy—­ the spatial undergirding—­would be taken care of by local and federal governments that would build physical environments for daily pursuits. Telling are the designers’ omissions: although there is substantial rhetoric about hard work and consumer comforts in Democracity, there is no

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real talk of politics—­of debate, disagreement, or even free assembly. The extensive layout for the city of the future has parks and gardens, but there is no place for, or mention of, town meetings, local boards, and decision-­ making bodies, or discernible reference to the practice of democracy. A phenomenon called Democracity was glorified, but without evidence of self-­rule. We are told to serve each other and to work in an interdependent fashion, but apparently this happens without speech or the press: We create and we build. The fruits of our labors are usurped and placed into the mechanics that make for a gorgeous American city. We are to be active in living, but passive by way of opinion and expression. Large-­ scale planning is the domain of unseen leaders, not elected human beings determining the needs of the population. The planners are humane and beneficent rulers bent on providing comfort, safety, and freedom from oppressiveness, slums, dirt, crime, and worry. This assumption of intellectual passivity, and the absence of ­political self-­determination, fit well with the sort of public that Gallup and the pollsters were envisioning and reinforcing at this particular moment. One could see the contented citizens of Democracity perfectly willing, in their public-­spiritedness and interconnectivity, to participate dutifully and without trauma in any opinion poll. The controlled, disciplined public of Democracity was precisely the one that pollsters desired. Surveyors needed respondents to answer the knock on the door and patiently answer the questions, choosing among answers honestly. This was an excellent match between the archetypical hardworking, cooperative American of a model city and the forthcoming, informed public that pollsters needed. There was another, more peculiar theme of Democracity that flew in the face of capitalism itself. In the quest for interdependence and unity there was no need for competition, either healthy or driven by envy. From the guide to Democracity, it seems that America was to have a planned economy, like the newly formed socialist Russia: Some of the aspects of Democracity strike us as strange. . . . For instance no part of it is trying to grow bigger than any other part. . . . Of the score of variously named Pleasantvilles, no one has any jealousy of the others. . . . In one Millville [an outer suburb of the city], boots are the chief article of manufacture, in another, television sets . . . neither wants particularly to be the “biggest small city in the country. . . .” All want to be clean and gay and full of happy citizens . . . size doesn’t matter. . . . All parts of the vast Democracity which is just big enough . . . and not too big.38

An odd rhetorical flourish for a model democratic city, but so strong was the desire to communicate unity that the fair planners purveyed a model

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far beyond what any New Deal brain truster ever proposed. It was, however, consistent with some tenets of modernism and the fast-­paced, technologically driven visions of the future one so often found in 1930s popular culture. This welcome submergence of competition in the idealized city, and the argument against ambition itself, may have been a rough fit to American capitalistic ethos, but it fit with the blind joy in consumerism that held so many parts of the 1939 fair together. Americans were defined by the fair as driven logically by the need to pursue everyday comforts and satisfy desires. The “people as consumer” element, woven through each corporate exhibit, was precisely how the fair opened as one dutifully visited first the entrance theme exhibit of Democracity. Particular manufacturers were not explicitly mentioned inside the Perisphere, but it was clear that workers in the city of the future worked in order to buy that safe and carefree lifestyle on display in industrial buildings. Utopia, defined as a comfortable lifestyle free of ill-­defined “tyranny,” was easily achieved if everyone knew their roles. Trust in government and American industry, unity and a respect for others, and attention to family and neighbors were the moving parts of Democracity, which was laid out in an elegant, aesthetically pleasing model. As thrilling as the exhibits were, Democracity being among the most spectacular and most representative of the overall theme, the fair reflected the power struggles and deeply ingrained forms of racism characterized by the 1930s. The fair was not—­despite the efforts of its creators and exhibitors—­somehow apart from politics. Far from it; it is best to think of the fair as a temporary, mammoth institution of sorts. Beneath the excitement of the exhibits and the carnival aspects—­the singing, dancing, displays of athleticism, international booths, technological wonders, and new cuisines—­were two particularly intractable and interconnected American challenges of the decade: labor strife and racism. Both were omnipresent, even if hidden from the typical visitor and whitewashed by Grover Whalen and the fair’s leadership. Whalen and the fair administration thought that a “closed shop” deal with the American Federation of Labor would create jobs, increase wages for workers in need, and bolster the power of New York–­area unions in ways that pleased liberal politicians. It was consistent with the prolabor aspects of the New Deal. Good motives all, and many a struggling tradesman benefited from the highly paid, steady work of the fair after years of hardship. Whalen miscalculated badly in his contractual agreements with the unions as the “closed shop” ended up hurting all parties: the union leadership inflated prices for work, added massive overtime charges wherever they could, threatened exhibitors, refused to undertake many needed

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tasks, and in general bilked many exhibitors. At first Whalen seemed to ac­cept it as inevitable, refusing public comment on it, but foreign exhibitors in particular were livid. The most comprehensive investigation of the problem was undertaken by a journalist for the Atlantic Monthly, who interviewed as many exhibitors as he could and found them distraught about serious debts and labor abuses dogging the construction, maintenance, and artistry of their displays. As the commissioner from Venezuela in charge of his country’s displays noted: We were invited by the President of the United States to make a gesture of international goodwill by exhibiting a bit of Venezuela so you might see what we are. . . . But, once here, we have existed only as prey. . . . See those mahogany statues? A New York union demanded that its men carve them. It wouldn’t let our sculptors to work on the grounds. Then, because we insisted that only our natives could create Venezuelan art, the movers’ union refused to transfer the statuary from their studio unless we paid a penalty of $300 for each of the five seven-­foot pieces of wood. Fifteen hundred dollars! Any expressman and two helpers could have done the job in an afternoon.39

The labor abuses were so severe that fair organizers were forced to halt the closed shop and renegotiate contracts to curb labor abuses after the 1939 season. Not a fine showing for the unions, who, angry as they were, had to lick their wounds and change their ways for the second season of the fair. These were still the early days of the modern American labor movement, and union leadership pushed to figure out its limits, including the extent of its power at the fair, an arena for experimentation in a New Deal America.40 While labor struggled to find its own place in the fair, the chronic em­ ployment discrimination faced by Black Americans was pervasive at the fair. The NAACP pointed out the irony of a fair focused on democracy and freedom where African Americans appeared primarily as entertainers, maids, and porters.41 African Americans attended the fair in droves, spending money on food and entertainment, but there was little possibility of lucrative or creative work, except in a very few instances. Among the many tensions and ironies over race across the fair were the musical numbers, which simultaneously showcased Black talent and reinforced the circumscribed place of African Americans in the popular arts. The confused notions of respect for Black talent and blockage of it culminated in choosing the music for Democracity. There had been a competition for a composition to accompany the spoken program, one that would play every six minutes throughout the day, every day, enmeshed

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in the script about our future world. Of the various well-­known composers of the day, Aaron Copeland among them, African American composer William Grant Still’s work stood out as capturing precisely what organizers hoped for in setting the mood inside the Perisphere. On the one hand they felt that choosing Still (already an accomplished musical talent) would be somehow good for race relations, but on the other hand they worried about putting a Black man’s talent in such a prominent place at the fair. In the end the planners chose talent over racial animosity, and millions of fairgoers would be treated to Still’s composition as they took in Democracity. So the massive central exhibit came alive with a captivating score by someone who suffered the indignities of race hatred every day beyond the artifice of the fairgrounds.42 Even though fewer than 700 African Americans would work at the fair (out of 6,335 employees), the single most important piece of music was composed by a Black man.

Public Space for Whom? The American Commons Fairs were always contingent on the availability and accessibility of public grounds, and by definition a fair is a spatial, place-­based event. It couldn’t have been any other way in a world where the notion of people meeting online—­in electronic “space”—­was unimaginable to anyone except science fiction writers. What is fascinating about 1939 is that it was the last historical moment when this particular blend of science, industry, and entertainment would be brought together, for a special mass public gathering in a particular, at a site built just for that purpose. There were amusement parks and midways before 1939, rallies and parade grounds, but they were for entertainment or brief political events during campaigns. There were always theaters to go to, before and after 1939, where a public of strangers would gather to watch a new movie, play, or musical performance. The fairs were different, though, in great part because of their sheer size, the marketing buildup, and the fact that they would disappear even after all the tremendous effort (many World’s Fair grounds became ordinary parks; the 1933 fairgrounds in Chicago are now the bucolic acres of Northerly Island Park). After the 1930s, with the war efforts, the gradual diffusion of television, and eventually the internet, publics went from being masses of people in bounded areas to atomized individuals at home—­audiences. In 1939, much of the thrill of the fair was tied to that truly spectacular transformation of space (from enormous ash heap to Democracity) and the sheer in-­person excitement of crowds. The latter was an obsession of the fair organizers but also of the fairgoers, journalists, and photographers who stood in awe of the number of people on the midways, on bridges and ramps, and passing through the exhibits. For

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Figure 4.6. Mississippi schoolroom. Word of the 1939 fair spread through the nation as newspapers covered the exhibitions, politics, and finances. Visitors brought souvenirs home, and schoolchildren like these in the impoverished Mississippi Delta were taught about a fair they would never see. They worked in cotton fields much of the year, but back in the classroom their teacher drew the iconic Trylon and Perisphere, far away in New York City, on her blackboard. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.

example, the popular General Motors Futurama exhibit, where people climbed onto moving seats to view from above another giant diorama of the modern world of 1960, had thirty thousand visitors a day. People waited in line for hours, and many photographs show the tremendous numbers from aerial views and breathtaking angles.43 It is difficult to imagine such an undertaking today because so many technologies and imagined worlds, like the Futurama exhibit, are far more effectively displayed through video, computer generation, and virtual reality devices. And traveling across the country by car or train, as millions did, to see live music, dancing, and technological wonders isn’t necessary at a time when these too have taken different forms and can appear on peoples’ screens, large and small. In 1939 the fair was simply amazing to fairgoers, a place they could see the future and witness these visions among throngs of other excited strangers. This mass, yet also interpersonal, experience that elated millions at the fair was a unique last gasp of people together in special, even sacred (to use an anthropological term)

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public spaces. The event created an enormous transitory public formed by attendees, and that feeling of being part of something larger, captured in the few oral histories we have of those who attended the fair, was precious. Attendees took their memories and souvenirs away with them and spread the word to friends and family across the country. The fair was covered extensively by the media, but many ripple effects occurred through the communications of common folks as well, who reported back on what they saw to their hometowns, with photographs and a dizzying array of inexpensive artifacts.44 The entire fair was an American space, but in the summer of 1940, the second season of the fair, there was an unexpected opportunity to explain yet again to the fairgoers that ours was a diverse yet unified nation. The opportunity arose because the Soviet Union pavilion was abandoned. The Soviets had participated with gusto the previous year, building and opening a massive set of structures constructed of marble, a map of the Soviet Union made of diamonds and other gems, statuary, images of Lenin and Stalin, mechanized dioramas, giant murals, and much more (it was condemned as vulgar and propagandistic by American critics, but crowds flocked to it).45 Particularly controversial was “Joe the Worker,” a 79-­foot-­tall man of steel in a jumpsuit holding up a red star atop a 188-­foot-­tall pedestal. It was taller than the George Washington statue and could be seen from locations across the fairgrounds and also from miles away (“Joe” is visible in figure 4.2, beyond the statue of Washington). While the exhibit attracted many fairgoers, being among the more spectacular country displays, the Soviets quickly dismantled the exhibit and left the fair after the first summer, in light of the new agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (the Molotov-­Ribbentrop Pact). After the Soviets deconstructed the building and shipped the components back home, the fair organizers had to use the large area for something that wouldn’t look pathetic in comparison, so they decided to build the “American Common” in its place. The Common (as in a New England common or town square) would, on a weekly basis, show off an American immigrant or minority group, inviting each to bring musicians, dancers, and other performers to entertain fairgoers. As opposed to foreign nation exhibits and performers, planners invited a variety of American citizens of diverse national backgrounds—­sometimes called “races”—­to own the space for a week, including Armenians, Greeks, Irish, and Romanians. Blacks and Native Americans were also included, and as was often typical of liberal people of the time, they lauded the Negro as an “immigrant,” as important as all others, usually omitting that their so-­called immigration was horrendously violent and involuntary. The Common would be “the meeting

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place at the Fair for ‘good neighbors’; citizens anxious to reinforce constructive measures for mutual understanding and appreciation.”46 Organizers apparently thought there might be some objections to the exhibit, so they specified that “ANTI” demonstrations would not be allowed to enter the Common, repeatedly emphasizing that no foreign citizens would be performing. The American Common was popular enough, although it was difficult to replace the colossal and resplendent Soviet exhibition. It is curious that such an American exhibit, one highlighting immigrants, hadn’t been included in the original fair plans, given the theme of unity. Then again, these years were characterized by great anxiety about who was American and where immigrants fit into the nation. This anxiety was expressed in the letters and memos flying back and forth among organizers as they planned the Common and is why some believed it was pioneering and possibly controversial. The exhibits set up by foreign governments to celebrate their national cultures were easy to understand and had been a part of fairs and expositions since the nineteenth century. But what was to be done with a country’s own immigrants, spatially and aesthetically, even if they had become citizens? Their ways were foreign and their patriotism was fuzzy and undetermined, so carving out a liminal space for them at the fair—­neither here nor there, not foreign ground but not quite fully American turf—­was the clearest path, or so the fair planners thought. I take up this larger question of what “to do” with immigrants, psychically, in relation to an American public and public opinion, in chapter 5, which is devoted to a dedicated intercultural radio education project.

* By the spring of 1940 it was clear that the United States was likely to become entangled in an increasingly dire European conflict as nations fell to Nazi Germany and its hegemonic ambitions. Although the official theme of the fair upon its opening in April 1939 was “The World of Tomorrow,” in order to underscore man’s triumphs in technology and societal unity, that unity and interconnectedness was also meant to broadcast global unity. It is why so much effort was put into bringing so many foreign national exhibits to the fair, taking years of work before the 1939 opening. The global aspect of the theme, as attractive as it was, felt false and ironic by 1940, with invaded European nations closing their exhibitions. In some cases, these abandoned exhibition spaces were taken up by their immigrant communities in the United States, who filled them with nostalgic items of their distant histories, sometimes along with evidence of contemporary bloodshed and human tragedy at the hands of

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the Germans (after much wrangling, Germany never did open its own pavilion at the fair, in either summer). Denmark and Norway could not manage a presence in the summer of 1940 either. Given how much had changed since the planning for the fair back in the mid-­1930s, the organizers shifted gears, swapping the official fair motto for a new one: “For Peace and Freedom.” The amusements and fun of the fair were ongoing, and the industrial displays kept attracting huge crowds, but another devastating great war loomed. Americans were realizing the impossibility of isolation. Fear and resignation about another massive conflict cast an uneasy shadow over the second season of the fair, making it a morass about the nation’s future, exciting and hopeful on the one hand but tremendously frightening on the other.47 In the early fall of 1940 the fair was dismantled. Twenty-­five years later, the 1964 New York World’s Fair would grandly revive the 1,200-­acre space where its predecessor sat, with few remains from 1939. I had an eerie, melancholy feeling walking the old fairgrounds on a cool weekday, with only a few souls strolling the paths. During the warm weather, it is a well-­used city park with an updated subway station, originally built to serve the fair, but much of the year it feels empty and abandoned, with decrepit remains of the huge 1964 observation towers, looming and overgrown with weeds. The last of the 1939 buildings—­one turned into a small city museum and the other now a community theater—­are reminders of the fairs. There is also the original, tiny concrete area containing the 1939 and 1964 fair time capsules, not to be opened for five thousand years, holding the objects fair organizers thought would be educational to future people.48 Dominating the park space today is the Unisphere, a huge, hollow stainless steel globe built for 1964. It is easily seen by drivers on the city streets that surround the park site and from the Grand Central Parkway, which is the closest major highway, taking visitors to Manhattan or the New York airports. Visitors to the area are often puzzled by the massive globe structure. Only a very few old-­timers and their children know that before the Unisphere, there was the imposing Trylon, the Perisphere, and a magnificent, gleaming-­white statue of George Washington watching over it all. The 1939 fair was well documented by the organizers from its earliest planning days, and these papers are protected by the New York Public Library. It continues to be a seemingly endless, rich archive for students, scholars, and the general public. Yet important for us is how the fair revealed the nature of “the public” and “public opinion” as they were being constructed for the longer term. The notion of the public understood and promoted by fair organizers was clear: Americans were hopeful, thrilled by the new consumer goods coming on the market, and excited

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Figure 4.7. General Motors Building, 1939. Massive buildings, such as the General Motors Pavilion, were constructed by the major corporations of the day. Inside the building was another spectacular model of living circa 1960, the Futurama exhibit, which was created by the distinguished designer Norman Bel Geddes and focused primarily on transportation as a component of working democracy. In 1940 Bel Geddes wrote that high-­quality connective highways across the nation would bring interpersonal meetings, exchange, understanding, and therefore the unity needed to keep America safe and prosperous. It was yet another expression of an imagined cohesive public at the fair. Courtesy of the Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture.

by a modernist, technologically driven future. The fair fused democracy, consumerism, and popular culture in a stunning, comprehensive fashion. Basic science was not interesting, organizers argued, and fairgoers didn’t miss it. By contrast, applied engineering was king, all in the cause of building more comfortable homes and gadgets that would serve families, enable more communication, and create carefree transportation. Unity, the fair said boldly, mattered so much that technology must be developed continuously to assure that society itself was possible. American interconnectedness defined us, was pleasurable, and was more important than ever because as leader of the free world we would need to be strong and without division. How to deal with immigrants, whether they were American, and whether African Americans even belonged at all within an

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idealized public were left unaddressed. African Americans were best enmeshed in spectacles or serving as entertainers. Foreign nationals, immigrants dancing in the American Common, Native Americans, and Blacks were all around, and in some undefined way were part of the world of the future. It was most comfortable to keep them tied to particular exhibits or to admire them as the beloved source of music, dance, and joy. All of these tendencies and dynamics collided in physical space; the former ash heap was a microcosm of America itself. Meanwhile, these same dynamics also collided in film and radio, the latter being a particularly powerful force in shaping public opinion at the time. There was nothing about the 1939–­1940 World’s Fair that undermined the way Roosevelt or the major pollsters viewed the public. Fairgoers were physically active, taking part in the technological wonders of exhibits, exploring and expressing desires, curiosity, and excitement. Not much was asked of them intellectually and politically; recall there was no place or talk of debate, disagreement, and argument in Democracity. The public of the fair was open and compliant. Americans were transparent in their views, honest, and good-­natured enough to answer Gallup’s or Roper’s queries in the new opinion polls of the day, and they kept an open heart as they listened to the voice of their charismatic president. The 1939 fair organizers did much of their own surveying of fairgoers, keeping their finger on the pulse of the public as best they could. They needed to boost admissions, price food, services, and entertainment appropriately, and generally keep the fair vibrant and clean for the many major corporate and international sponsors who had invested in such massive building projects, programs, and exhibits. In chapter 7 I draw out how it is that FDR, the early pollsters, and the multiple elite creators of the 1939 World’s Fair (the fair leaders, corporate participants, and politicians) mapped the American public, as well as our expectations of public opinion, in our own time. The public, whether fairgoers, poll respondents, or citizens listening to their president and reading the press, was a willing participant in this definitional process of the 1930s. We answered questions, we bought the appliances and cars for the betterment of our lives, and we avoided as best we could the sort of political and intellectual challenges presented by immigrants and their sons and daughters with odd names, and the African Americans in our midst. They could be placed securely—­psychically, economically, and spatially—­in ways that would protect us. These others were part of our world, no doubt, often purveyors of goods, shopkeepers, entertainers, workers, and neighbors. But their membership in the public was alternatively fragile, unclear, or worrisome; it certainly was not an issue that most white Americans were anxious to take up with any passion. De-

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mocracity, both the model of the fair and its driving theme, was labeled a utopia, but in reality, with the exception of the wilder futuristic technology it was simply a projection of the American public in its current state. People would not be better educated in the future, and they wouldn’t try to tackle difficult social and cultural problems: there was an absence of such talk in the expansive models of future living. Technology would bloom and industry would grow, but any sort of evolution or improvement in our minds and habits of thought—­more openness, inclusion, self-­ reflection, or intellectual challenge—­didn’t seem to fit. Americans of tomorrow would be happier and more “satisfied” as the fair’s rhetoric often put it in documents, programs, and news releases. The 1939 fair’s bread and circuses were wonderful, thrilling to almost all who visited. There were surprisingly few negative or sarcastic essays or articles in the newspapers and popular magazines of the day; the press seemed to have bought into the themes and dreams of the fair, despite the fact that the fair lost money in the end. Much like the new opinion poll, the 1939 fair was ultimately infantilizing as it created a public. The public was passive, easily entertained, positive, and open to communication; its opinions were right on the surface to see and for pollsters to measure. Corporate exhibits and advertising of the day built the same sort of public, a public characterized by cheerful consumption. Most of all, the public—­created and reinforced at turns—­was passive, largely nonargumentative, and hopeful about their democratic nation slowly pulling out of the Great Depression. The New Deal had been the largest and most ambitious federal government attempt to take care of a struggling population, and the leaders of American industry did their part. For all the damage of the Depression and the looming world war, there was much to celebrate as a nation. The broad outlines of how the public should be, feel, and act were all there and supported mightily by political leaders, persuaders, those tasked with polling the public, and titans of corporate America alike.

5 * Radio Embraces Race and Immigration, Awkwardly

Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.

Franklin Roosevelt to the Daughters of the American Revolution, 1938

Felt across social classes, ethnic populations, and regions of the nation, the economic downturn that began during the Hoover administration lurched into the early 1930s as Roosevelt took office. Both administrations, members of Congress, leaders of industry, academics, journalists, and other keen observers of the larger social forces at play worried about the brewing cauldron of prejudice and anxiety that might further imperil a shaky nation. Among the particular concerns, as was so often the case during even far less difficult periods of economic instability, was grave apprehension about the perceived dangers posed by immigrants and nonimmigrant racial minorities. I have argued throughout this book that various leaders and institutions tried to will “the public” and “public opinion” into existence in the 1930s, but those were of course ­powerful white men acting from platforms of tremendous entitlement. What of nonwhite people and immigrants? Did all the talk of the American public and its opinions—­talk directly from the president, from the pollsters, and from the city leaders and industrial giants who staged the World’s Fair—­include minority populations? Immigrants and minorities were certainly captured in the anonymous samples of people queried by pollsters, as commercial surveyors generally did not (and still do not) ask about citizenship or length of residency. Although minorities and immigrants were among the millions polled by Gallup and others in the 1930s and were embedded in the broad audience the president addressed by radio, there was an unresolved, murky issue of the public’s fundamental components. In this chapter I explore a novel instance in which early radio, so critical in FDR’s arsenal for shaping the public to his liking, was used in a very different manner by a progressive group of government officials,

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broadcasters, and educators. They began with passionate hopes of widespread “intercultural education,” a form of “good propaganda” that might reduce discrimination toward immigrants and ethnic others (i.e., African Americans and Jews).1 The project was a twenty-­six-­episode, nationally Immigrants All, which broadcast radio program called Americans All—­ aired weekly on Sunday afternoons from the fall of 1938 to the spring of 1939. This major undertaking by the federal government in collaboration with the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) was without question the most ambitious attempt to address prejudice in the 1930s through broadcasting. Eighty years later it provides an unmatched window into the nature of ethnic and race discrimination, as well as the opportunities and limitations of radio as an agent for social change. As generally pure in motive as the series was, it is an aperture into the ways immigrants and nonwhite Americans have always been a difficult fit to the very notion of “a public.” Not meaning to, the series reinforced the challenges of where immigrants stood by both sidestepping the central question of their belonging in the public and by fortifying precisely what the producers hoped to crush: immigrants are on the outside, not part of the polity composed of citizens, even if their labor and contributions were essential to it. These days we talk about the many “implicit biases” people carry about minority populations, and these were all certainly at play in the circles of educated, naive white liberals in the 1930s.2 Given the lack of public discourse about discrimination more generally, biases mostly went unnoticed or unremarked, especially when generated by clearly identifiable progressives. To my mind, one of the best places to explore the matter of immigrants and racial minorities—­their position in the 1930s construction of “the public”—­is the content of radio. Radio was by far the most powerful, engaging, and invasive medium of the period, hence its gravitational pull to all who sought attention, from musicians, comedians, and sponsoring manufacturers to the president of the United States. The intimacy of radio was felt so palpably, a forerunner to the ways our devices and podcasts whisper and blare at us today. Radio created an unmatched relationship between speaker and listener in ways that ultimately felt, even if heard in a crowd, essentially personal. My central question is whether and how the radio could introduce a new way of thinking about the public to that very public. Americans All had a laudable progressive message, one designed to promote the vitality of immigrants and advocate for them. Yet the program was entirely silent on whether nonnative, nonwhite Americans’ opinions mattered, whether they were part of the electorate, and whether they could or should become citizens with the rights and privileges of full citizenship. So often in the texts of public rhetoric, literature,

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policy, and media, sins of omission are far greater than those of commission. Americans All was just such a case: the lack of argument for immigrants as members of the American public is striking since, ironically, immigrants, their grown children, and African Americans were included in opinion poll samples of the 1930s. They were workers, taxpayers, consumers, and fairgoers. Were they in or were they out? Neither, it seems.3 Like the public brought into being and defined by multiple parties—­ FDR, the pollsters, and corporate America—­radio added its own particular biases and difficulties to the troubled modern birth of public opinion as an idea.4 The new medium baked difficult challenges into the very notion of a public, reinforcing how ethnic and racial diversity complicates the ideas of a public and its opinions. Radio’s appearance did much good, but it foreshadowed the problematic role of the media in subsequent decades. People outside the American ethnic mainstream then and now hoped to be counted in a meaningful sense in the public, but even the most progressive radio programming fell short, often reinforcing stereotyping, discrimination, and fear of others.

Nativism, Depression Style In the early 1920s, Americans felt great relief with a brutal war behind them. The world ahead looked fine, with bursting affluence across the states and booming cities erecting massive buildings, museums, and monuments to preserve their heritage. There was the excitement sparked by mass production of new, affordable consumer goods, and at the center was the automobile, such a fitting technology for a vast nation and a seemingly limitless future. With cars came freedom, a real and metaphorical open road for the middle and working classes.5 Women could vote starting in 1920 with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment, and Hollywood came into its own with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and a spate of movies that brought joy to even the smallest of towns. Uglier aspects of the culture were weakened or glossed over by manufacturers intent, in the words of historian Roland Marchand, on “advertising the American Dream.”6 For instance, the Ku Klux Klan, which had wreaked havoc both North and South in the late 1910s and early 1920s, had begun to fade, losing members and some measure of credibility by the mid-­1920s. Despite what was “roaring” and liberalizing at the time, there were dangerous and reactionary sentiments not far beneath the cultural surface. After nearly one hundred years of loosely enforced immigration laws and largely unchecked immigration, Americans were ready to slam the door to new immigrants, regardless of whether they sought economic oppor-

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tunity or relief from political and religious terror. In his first message to the nation, in 1923, Calvin Coolidge would articulate the view of many Americans and members of Congress who represented them: America must be kept American. For this purpose, it is necessary to continue a policy of restricted immigration. . . . I am convinced that our present economic and social conditions warrant a limitation on those to be admitted. We should find additional safety in a law requiring the immediate registration of all aliens. Those who do not want to be partakers of the American spirit ought not to settle in America.7

Shortly after Coolidge took office, Congress passed what was a dramatically restrictive law, greatly limiting immigration based on the numbers of already-­settled immigrants in the United States. Using the 1920 census as a guide, the federal government determined the percentage of the population represented by each immigrant group. Then officials set low number quotas for each group, determining how many new immigrants in each category would be accepted. No distinction was made between immigrants and refugees. This law, the Johnson-­Reed Act, set quotas but also halted all immigration from Asian nations and called for the immediate deportation of all immigrants above quota limits. The impact was dramatic. Between 1910 and 1914, about 4.5 million immigrants entered the United States. Between 1925 and 1929 that number dropped to 450,000, or 150,000 annually, as dictated by the new law. (The draconian 1924 measure was largely in place until 1965, when national origin quotas fell out of favor.)8 Table 5.1 lists the quotas for various immigrant groups, instituted with the Johnson-­Reed Act. Anti-­immigrant feelings were pervasive, found in every corner of the country after the end of the Great War. As Aristide Zolberg notes, the fear of “Bolshevik contagion” and a desire for a return to “normalcy” drove some of the campaigns against immigrants, particularly because immigrants had been involved in union organizing and strikes. During the same period, leaders of the eugenics movement warned of a coming destruction of the superior white gene pool, which was believed to be essential for the future of a strong country. For example, in a grim chapter of the history of the American Psychological Association, leadership there concluded (based on surveys of American servicemen) that Blacks and new immigrants were both intellectually inferior to whites and to immigrants who had settled previously. The political debate in Washington was not much of a debate at all, Zolberg writes: “In one of the most spectacular displays of legislative power in American history, with two waves of its magic wand Congress sought to make immigration disappear, much

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Table 5.1: Annual Immigration Quotas under the 1924 Immigration Act. Northwest Europe and Scandinavia

Eastern and Southern Europe

Other Countries

Country

Quota

Country

Quota

Country

Quota

Germany

51,227

Poland

5,982

1,100

Great Britain and Northern Ireland Irish Free State (Ireland) Sweden Norway France Denmark Switzerland

34,007

Italy

3,845

Africa (other than Egypt) Armenia

28,567

Czechoslovakia

3,073

Australia

121

9,561 6,453 3,954 2,789 2,081

Russia Yugoslavia Romania Portugal Hungary

2,248 671 603 503 473

100 100 100 100 100

1,648 785 512 471 228 100 100

Lithuania Latvia Spain Estonia Albania Bulgaria Greece

Palestine Syria Turkey Egypt New Zealand and Pacific Islands All others

1,900

Total (number)

3,745

Netherlands Austria Belgium Finland Free City of Danzig Iceland Luxembourg Total (number) Total (percent)

142,483 86.5

Total (number) Total (percent)

344 142 131 124 100 100 100 18,439 11.2

124

Total (percent)

2.3

Total annual immigrant quota: 164,667 Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1929), 100.

as it had attempted to do with drinking by way of the Volstead Act [the law enforcing prohibition]. Whereas alcohol consumption was reduced by only one-­third, in the sphere of immigration the transformation was radically effective.”9 Nativist sensibilities in the United States, codified in the 1924 law, were further solidified as the stock market crashed in 1929 and economic decline ensued. These forces legitimated rabidly isolationist attitudes, prejudice against newcomers with their suspicious languages and customs, a searing racism, open antisemitism, and fears that all immigrants could displace American workers. After all, immigrants were desperate and would work any job for low wages. By the time Roosevelt stepped into the White House in March 1933 the nation had turned profoundly inward, looking to solve its own problems and not those of foreigners.

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One might think that the tremendous restrictions of the Johnson-­Reed Act would have made Americans less fearful because immigration plummeted and the tiny number of new foreigners couldn’t create much trouble. In addition, the immigrants who had settled before 1924 were living peacefully throughout the states. The sheer number of new immigrants may have dropped in the 1930s, but the massive number of foreigners who had come to the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth had already given birth to new generations of ethnic Americans: they built businesses, dominated areas of major cities with ethnic enclaves (e.g., the near-­northwest neighborhoods of Chicago and New York’s Chinatown), and settled huge swaths of the Midwest with farms. They were nearly everywhere, from coast to coast, with varying degrees of integration and assimilation. But despite this settlement, as is often the case with racism, long-­held discriminatory attitudes toward immigrants and their children were rekindled as economic hardship brought out the worst in many. This was the environment that worked to the great advantage of men like Father Charles Coughlin, who saw the Depression as an opportunity to feed animosity and aggrievement. Between the hardships of the economic downturn and the anxiety about accepting ethnic (and possibly radicalized) minorities from a war-­torn Europe, chronic discriminatory attitudes prevailed across social classes. As has been explored by many scholars in recent decades, Franklin Roosevelt’s own attitudes toward refugees fleeing the rise of fascist European nations was ambivalent at best, and antisemitic and racist at worst. He avoided direct address and confrontation on the matter, leaving immigrant restriction efforts to bureaucrats in the State Department despite the pleas of distinguished citizens who lobbied him to accept desperate victims of terror. Most dramatic is the case of the Jews, so many of whom were denied entry into the United States and then sent to their deaths in concentration camps. Although Roosevelt seemed genuinely distressed at times and had hired many Jewish academics, intellectuals, and policy experts for high-­profile positions in his administration, his actions toward refugees belied an entrenched, gentile, upper-­class antisemitism. Resistance to Jewish immigrants, including children, was exemplified by the refusal of the United States to allow the MS St. Louis safe harbor in 1939. After a grueling voyage, a failed attempt to land in Cuba, and then a refusal of the Roosevelt administration to allow the ship’s approximately nine hundred Jews to enter the United States, the captain had no other choice than to return to Germany. The passengers became victims of the regime, with large numbers sent to their deaths.10 By contrast, many politicians emerged from and took advantage of the so-­called melting pot by using the presence of ethnic Americans to

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appeal to the new enclaves, gaining loyalty and political power. Often, ethnic communities in the urban areas elected legislators of their own heritage to represent them in state assemblies or in Congress. Best known among them was Al Smith, a Catholic of Irish-­Italian descent who grew up impoverished on New York’s lower east side. After serving in the state assembly, he eventually became governor, and then Democratic opponent to Herbert Hoover in a failed 1928 bid for the presidency. That immigrant children, whose parents had come to the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were voting in large numbers was disturbing to many Americans, although it was predictable and inevitable. And white America was also threatened, just as fiercely, by the growing influence of migrants. The “Great Migration” (the movement of so many poor African Americans from the rural poverty of the South to opportunities in northern factories) was a phenomenally important driver of white fears because the population shift was so dramatic. Until this demographic change, Blacks were thought to be cordoned off in southern states and stuck there for the long term. They were in fact free to move, to try and fulfill ambition, to escape Jim Crow and its horrors, and to provide for their families. So they did, in droves.11 Between the coming of age of second-­generation Americans of ethnic descent and the movement north of African Americans, the notion of a peaceful American heterogeneity became more contested than ever. The so-­called melting pot was now really upon us, a joy to many progressives but terrifying to so many whites. As a result of these now obvious changes, and with the stunning rise of fascism in Europe articulating a path to racial purity, American-­style fascist organizations flourished in many areas of the country. They used the American flag, rhetoric of the Founding Fathers, and other symbols of patriotism to present yet another iteration of populism to their fellow citizens. There were quite a few such groups, and they gained traction during the Depression years. Perhaps the best-­known display of force, remarkable for its sheer size and flamboyance, was the “pro-­American” German American Bund rally of February 1939 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It featured large images of George Washington along with swastikas and American flags mounted all around the arena. An estimated twenty thousand people showed up for an evening of German songs, Nazi salutes, and antisemitic speeches. Much of the rhetoric advocated for a return to a better, whiter America, a glorious past now threatened by racial minorities, immigrants, and communists.12 We have somewhat unreliable, scant quantitative opinion data on prejudice from the period, a time when pollsters lacked sophisticated methods for trying to distinguish sincere attitudes from those that the pollster might want to hear.13 It is one of many reasons why we can only

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look at behavior, public policy, housing practices, media content, art, literature, and culture more generally to discern the complex and chief contours of racism. No region of the country was particularly welcoming to immigrants, migrants, or second-­generation citizens, no matter their importance to the workforce, their entrepreneurial successes, their contributions to the arts and sciences, or the many other precious cultural and intellectual talents they possessed. The 1924 anti-­immigrant law was a long time in coming and was simply the culmination of decades of hate and fear. James Bryce alluded to it in 1891, writing, “Already the United States, which twenty years ago rejoiced in the increase of immigration, begins to regard it with disquiet.”14 That midcentury “rejoicing” was likely tied to the sheer skilled and unskilled labor immigrants brought as industrialization accelerated, but it certainly did not temper more deep-­seated apprehension of foreigners and African Americans. The 1930s remains one of the most volatile periods in political culture, a dynamic that struck terror in intellectuals and educators in particular, who saw the growing angst of economic hardship in the context of increasingly diverse cities and classrooms. Sincere questions were raised in many corners about who was actually American, who wasn’t, and how to boost tolerance. The national conversation was intense, fueled by the sweeping social movements of communism and fascism abroad, which might very well blossom here. Immigrant communities and African American neighborhoods were suspect by many as enclaves where threatening ideologies might take hold because these populations were marginally part of the citizenry and their patriotism might not be rock solid. All of this made the question of American identity—­its fundamental characteristics—­a high-­ stakes public matter. Historian Wendy Wall described one of the more notable forays into the investigation of Americanism: a 1937 essay contest with a $1,000 prize sponsored by the editors at Harper’s magazine, asking readers to define the “American Way.” The contest brought in 1,570 essays with no consensus whatsoever and wildly differing contributions running the gamut of opinion and ideology. The magazine ended up printing a few essays, but it was clear to the editors that “American” was whatever suited one’s agenda and belief system.15 Wall quotes the writer James Truslow Adams, the man who coined the phrase “the American Dream,” reflecting in 1940: “Are we, as some have said, merely a hodgepodge of minorities? Or are we a nation with a common background and, despite our political battles, a continuing national ideal?”16 Chronic nativism, so deep in the American bloodstream, combined with increasingly established ethnic communities and frightening ideological movements abroad, led a few progressive educators to set their sights on pedagogy far beyond schools and local churches. They began to think

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Figure 5.1. Anti-­immigrant imagery. Fears of immigrants swelled from the mid-­ nineteenth century on as Americans debated the dangers presented by the wide range of nonnatives seeking opportunity. In this 1860 political cartoon, Irish and Chinese immigrants swallow Uncle Sam, after which the particularly disdained Chinese immigrant eats the Irishman and takes his hat. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

that an audacious effort to educate the public through radio at the national level would be far more powerful than anything that could be done locally. Radio had legitimacy and goodwill; it was clearly the most persuasive and beloved cultural force of the 1930s. The new medium was novel, entirely different in nature, production, and consumption from film. Radio programs enter the household, and their voices become embedded in family life. Gilbert Seldes, a premier cultural critic, lecturer, and future television executive, posited that while the movies were the arena for myths and dreams, radio spoke with authority. Hollywood manufactures fantasy and captures the imagination in unreal ways, but radio was America’s oracle, the highest priest of all. In his 1950 book he quoted broadcast executive Victor Ratner, who famously said, “To criticize radio, why, that’s un-­American!”17 Radio, Seldes argued, was a medium built in the public interest because it was constant, omnipresent, and in-

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timately enmeshed in the day-­to-­day lives of all people. Clearly, government’s regulation and close involvement in licensing and content was only right and justified, given the power of the medium and the chance for abuse by evil yet compelling actors. In the 1930s there were many such actors at home and abroad. Radio could and did change attitudes, sensibilities, and the imaginations of Americans through programming. Just as the everyday insults of ethnic and racial prejudice were manifest in countless ways in the 1930s, so too were they in media. Anti-­immigrant and antiminority stereotyping were as commonplace in radio as they were in literature, theater, and film. One need look no further than the most popular radio program during this Golden Age, Amos ‘n’ Andy—­a serial starring two white actors portraying stereotyped Black characters, using racist clichés and generally demeaning stereotypes of African Americans and their communities. The program, intended to be humorous for the entire, primarily white, listening audience, had a long run on radio and then (with cast changes) on television. And there was Father Coughlin’s programming, spewing hatred but having the unintended consequence of inspiring educators to seek counterbalance. In any case, the sheer number of new programs of all sorts, the continual experimentation with novel entertainment genres, the strong corporate interest in the medium, and the clear and immediate power of broadcast advertising, as well as radio’s centrality to political persuasion, were simply astonishing. As radio took hold as the most compelling medium, the one that kept people glued to their sets and anxious for programming, the audience for radio was the same population riveted by economic hardship and discrimination. Both those discriminated against and those doing the discriminating comprised the broad audience of the Golden Age. Radio programming was designed to attract the greatest possible number of listeners in this era, long before there was “microtargeting” to particular subsets of the population. On the contrary, although magazines for special interests were well entrenched by the 1930s and cities still had multiple partisan newspapers, radio and its programs were meant for everyone. It was the first truly mass medium, focused on an undivided mass of American listener-­consumers, no matter the empirical reality of a diverse nation.

Radio Meets Intercultural Education Teachers in the 1930s often taught students very different than themselves and were ill prepared for the mix of pupils they found. They also lacked experience with the parents of these students, many without English-­ language skills, to whom they were accountable. So it is no surprise that

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leaders in education took the broad matter of what was then often called “intercultural education” into their own hands. One such early leader of the movement was Rachel Davis DuBois, a white teacher born in 1892 in New Jersey who went on to become a national advocate for tolerance, understanding among diverse populations, and the development of practical tools for confronting ethnic, racial, and sex discrimination. Through an organization called the Service Bureau for Intercultural Education, she developed materials, ran workshops in many school districts and higher education settings, and connected with like-­minded professionals advocating for immigrants and minorities. DuBois was a fiercely committed activist; contemporaries wrote that she was passionate, vocal, and relentless in her fight for tolerance. As DuBois worked and advocated in regional and national forums (her output of letters, lectures, books, and reports is enormous), Roosevelt and his New Deal administration were coming to grips with the fundamental problems of education and literacy. While pursuing the urgent goal of employment for Americans, those running the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the youth employment organization of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), realized the extent of basic educational deficits among their workers. As a result, the CCC began establishing classrooms first to teach literacy, then standard science, math, and humanities instruction. Voluntary participations in these courses skyrocketed, and by the late 1930s an estimated 90 percent of CCC workers were in educational programs, along with their regular tasks of clearing brush to create paths, planting trees, building public parks, and the like.18 While providing education under the CCC auspices was a brilliant addition, these make-­do classrooms did not really belong under WPA administration, hence Roosevelt’s appointment of John Studebaker in 1934 as US commissioner of education. He was given broad authority to create programs and curricula, and he led the new Federal Radio Education committee. Studebaker pondered ways to use the new mass medium for educational purposes, given its tremendous power and the ability of the federal government to gather research and then to create rich content. He envisioned a role for radio far beyond the dull, dry content that government normally produced and local stations were forced to air. Multiple forces and people came together around the same moment, and DuBois managed to make contact with Commissioner Studebaker. She argued her case for a radio program aimed at educating Americans about both the struggles of and intolerance toward immigrants, their children, Jews, and African Americans. While DuBois pitched her program idea, another educator from Chicago, Avinere Toigo, was approaching the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) about the same topic. NBC rejected

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Figure 5.2. John Studebaker, commissioner of education, 1935. Studebaker, seen here with Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Josephine Roche, championed Americans All—­Immigrants All and continued to advocate for radio education of all sorts. It was an uphill battle in general, even though Americans All seemed a great success in terms of both listenership and the legitimacy of what was then called “intercultural education.” Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

the idea, believing it would be both unpopular and offensive, as it would laud immigrant contributions, making them seem more important than those of native-­born whites. Toigo then went to Studebaker, who championed the idea, but was also rejected by NBC. Eventually CBS, in concert with Studebaker’s agency, took to the idea and hired DuBois as a research consultant and Gilbert Seldes to write the scripts. CBS organized live orchestral music, located actors, and offered a valuable weekly Sunday afternoon time slot for twenty-­six episodes of an educational program in the spirit of intercultural education. Most episodes were devoted to the stories and battles of particular immigrant groups, but a few looked at the larger matters of American immigration and intolerance. There were scores of people inside CBS and outside of the company (e.g., leaders of national ethnic rights organizations, teachers, and performers) involved in script review and the narrative structure of the series. After some wrangling about both the approach and the title, the series was

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eventually called Americans All—­Immigrants All and aired weekly from November 1938 through the winter and spring of 1939.19 The program had widespread distribution on one hundred radio stations throughout the nation, with massive publicity promoting it. It was listed in newspapers and magazines with the weekly radio schedules, but there were extra efforts made to spread the word, including twenty-­five thousand brochures sent to high schools.20 There were sources of funding beyond CBS and the federal government, namely the Carnegie Foundation and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the latter paying DuBois’s salary. Nicholas Montalto, who studied the origins of Americans All, outlined the tensions among the many people involved in created the program.21 There were the dedicated crusaders like DuBois and her colleagues, as well as ethnic group leaders she consulted on the episodes. These representatives from organizations like the AJC and immigrant rights agencies analyzed scripts, making suggestions and watching for problematic content, although they were far from successful in controlling all content or eliminating stereotypes about their communities. The series addressed an odd mix of groups, some natural and some reconstructed from centuries past. For example, there were episodes and references to the earliest white European immigrants, presumably to please groups like the Daughters of the American Revolution or simply not to offend the majority of audience members. After all, there was that worry about the series promoting immigrants and others over the white majority of Americans. Also strange—­and after much debate—­Seldes created an episode on Jews, who were a religious group and not an ethnic enclave from a particular nation. Most fraught in script production was an episode devoted to “the Negro.” Obviously Blacks were not immigrants who came to the United States voluntarily or seeking refuge; they were captives in the brutal slave trade, then kept as human chattel. Despite the lack of fit to the series, it was an opportunity for DuBois and African American intellectuals to help audiences understand the contributions and struggles of Black communities throughout the United States. Studebaker rejected DuBois’s advocacy for the formal appointment of an African American consultant for the series, but she was allowed to gather unpaid consultants, W. E. B. Du Bois among them. W. E. B. Du Bois (no relation to Rachel) and others were able to influence and rewrite early drafts in ways that contextualized the contemporary African American experience, underscored the challenges they had faced, and made clear how and why Blacks were fundamentally American. As Barbara Dianne Savage writes in what is the premier essay about African Americans in the series,22 the two groups who were not like the ethnic immigrant others—­Blacks and Jews—­had different agendas and

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complexities to deal with: African Americans grabbed the opportunity to explain the vital nature of their history and centrality to the nation, whereas Jews were not sure they wanted to be highlighted in their own episode. After all, Jewish organizations were generally intent on assimilating and melting into America, not standing out. This particular Jewish-­ American debate—­pitting cultural distinction against assimilation and belonging—­would continue for decades and is in many ways still with us.23 Although NBC rejected it, CBS’s interest in a program about immigrants and minorities is fairly easy to understand; they had previously aired a program on Latin America, and it was likely that an even more broadly themed show might do well, in their calculation. Yet one wonders why the federal government, embodied by Commissioner Studebaker, would champion what could be controversial. Montalto argues that there were probably two government hopes. First, the series might help guard against the sort of outbreak of anti-­immigrant fervor in the United States after the Great War. There was high likelihood of our future involvement in yet another European conflict, and American unity would be vital for the sacrifices ahead. Another possibility is that the program could soften public attitudes and strife directed toward refugees in various localities. Although the number of refugees was diminished in the 1930s due to the 1924 immigration restrictions, there were still many coming and many already in the United States trying to make their way. Radio Guide, a general magazine for listeners that published weekly programming schedules along with features on programs, stars, and the industry, breathlessly announced Americans All in December 1938 with an unsigned article, “Uncle Sam Schoolmaster.”24 The author included quotes from Studebaker and described the series, congratulating educators and government leaders for finally realizing that “radio is, potentially, the greatest single agency for education that the world has ever known.” Radio would be the key to America’s future success as a democracy: “In a world gone mad, tolerance and justice for all become vitally important. ‘Americans All—­Immigrants All’ is Government propaganda, if you like—­ propaganda for peace and good-­will among men.” The article concludes: A Norwegian immigrant family listens to “Americans All—­Immigrants All.” When the broadcast is over, somehow, magically, they have found a firmer understanding of their own people, a greater tolerance and appreciation of the Italians, Poles, the Germans who live and work side by side with them. To these people, and to uncounted thousands more, radio no longer means just Charlie McCarthy of the baseball broadcasts. Radio today is a teacher and guide. Through it thousands upon thousands of us are learning fast, and riding ahead with America!25

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Americans All—­Immigrants All: The Programs Once Studebaker gave the green light to the series, it all came together in a speedy manner: Seldes began writing using Rachel DuBois’s research late in 1938, and the first episode aired in November. Given the need for actors, music, and rehearsals, bringing the show to air was a real feat and reflected Studebaker’s urgency to put a stake in the ground: radio would be a constructive, educational force in American life and could also promote the fundamental values of freedom and equality so often voiced by the president. While FDR used the radio for specific strategic policy reasons, Studebaker worked on the broader sociocultural goals one associates with public education, his bailiwick. In her examination of correspondence around the program, Savage finds that there was some disagreement between Rachel DuBois and Seldes about the approach to the series. DuBois argued for individual episodes, each focusing on a different immigrant or minority group and the discrimination they faced, whereas Seldes rejected that as too bold or progressive and preferred a more conservative approach to immigration as a broad process. In the end, there was a compromise, with both individual episodes on particular groups and others on the notions of integration and unity.26 Table 5.2 lists the twenty-­six episodes of the program, all of which included live orchestral music, recorded in the CBS studios. Each episode was about thirty minutes long and typically included one or more stories of particular immigrants, their difficult journey to America, how they got their start, the challenges they face, and how they successfully managed to establish a business, pursue an invention, or create art and music. The episodes about “The Jews” and “The Negro” take the same general form but depart in critical ways, given that African Americans were brought to the country in bondage, by force, and Jews—­while many were immigrants—­are an ethnically diverse religious group hailing from multiple nations. Only schools and civic groups could likely afford to order the recordings for later use, and there was a 119-­page listening guide to accompany the recordings. The average person hoping to extend their learning could order a free sixteen-­page listener booklet from the Office of Education with a detailed timeline of which immigrant groups landed when and why (e.g., “1619: Negroes are first brought in as slaves,” or “1847: Irish began coming in large numbers because of famine and political oppression”). The rest of the booklet was devoted to changes in immigration policy, charts of how American industrial production grew thanks to various immigrant groups (relative to lesser growth in China,

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Table 5.2: Radio Episodes of Americans All—­Immigrants All (Columbia Broadcasting System, 1938–­1939). Episode 1: “Opening Frontiers”

Episode 2: “Our English Heritage”

Episode 3: “Our Hispanic Heritage”

Episode 4: “Scotts Scotch-­Irish, and Welsh”

Episode 5: “Winning Freedom” Episode 6: “The Negro”

Episode 7: “The French and Netherlanders” Episode 8: “Upsurge of Democracy” Episode 9: “The Irish”

Episode 10: “The Germans” 

Episode 11: “The Scandinavians” Episode 12: “Closing Frontiers” Episode 13: “The Jews”

Episode 14: “The Slavs” (part 1) Episode 15: “The Slavs” (part 2) Episode 16: “The Orientals” Episode 17: “The Italians”

Episode 18: “Near Eastern People”

Episode 19: “Other Peoples” (Hungarians, Romanians, Portuguese, Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and Latvians) Episode 20: “Contributions to Industry” Episode 21: “Contributions in Science” Episode 22: “Arts and Crafts”

Episode 23: “Social Progress”

Episode 24: “A New England Town” Episode 25: “An Industrial City” Episode 26: “Grand Finale”

Germany, Russia, and other nations), a map of where immigrants settled, an exhaustive section listing broad fields of immigrant contributions (e.g., “Transportation,” “Manufacturing,” “Law and Order,” or “Journalism”), and a long bibliography with books to read and immigrant foundations to contact. There were oddities in the listener booklet, including an accurate but perversely sunny section on “Our Present Policy” about immigration. After celebrating the open doors of previous eras, the reader is told that some checking of immigration was needed, hence the introduction of

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literacy tests followed by the 1924 restrictions and quotas. When discussing briefly the present policy as of the writing (1939), the booklet reads: The theory that America should be a refuge for the oppressed of all nations has been quite generally honored in shaping our immigration policy. However, the United states is no longer a refuge for the oppressed peoples of all the world in the same way as it was in the past. . . . [I]n the words of former President Coolidge: Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower or three years to the steerage is not half so important as whether his Americanism today is real and genuine. No matter on what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat.27

Studebaker, as commissioner of education, and Harold Ickes, as secretary of the interior, doubtlessly had the final sign-­off authority on the pamphlet and chose to avoid the real tragedy of the 1924 law. It was well known at the time that many desperate refugees were turned away, either at consulates abroad or upon landing on American shores. To say that the pamphlet, like the series itself, was full of mixed messages is a strong understatement. The Roosevelt administration, as humanitarian as it was on many dimensions, failed to pursue open-­door policies: officials were unwilling to discuss the logic of their restrictive, often heartless policies. Studebaker, such a bold progressive, chose the politically acceptable way out of the conundrum, celebrating immigrant contributions and avoiding discussion of immigration restrictions. The case of the Jewish broadcast was a particularly fraught one, given that influential American Jews were lobbying FDR to accept refugees in numbers well beyond the wretched victims of the MS St. Louis. In the end, though, the AJC and other Jewish institutions were generally happy with the broadcast, supporting it enough to encourage rabbis to promote the broadcast in their communities.28 Unlike the broadcasts themselves, the pamphlet cheerfully if clumsily took on some of the tougher questions, with a dense page devoted to the query “Are People Really Different?” It poses a variety of questions: what a race actually is, whether all ethnic group members inherit the same characteristics, whether some groups or races are superior to others, and the like. In the section on “Physical Characteristics,” we are told that there are obvious differences in color and height across groups, but it concludes that there is plenty of physical difference within groups as well, so it’s not a matter worthy of attention. On “Mental Characteristics,” we are given conclusions reached by Franz Boas (although Boas is often referred to as “the father of American anthropology,” here he is identified only as

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“an outstanding scientist”). According to the booklet, Boas and “Hooton” (presumably Earnest Hooton, another academic anthropologist) find that there are no mental differences among the races, and no moral ones either: “There are no racial monopolies of either human virtues or vices.” Highly scientific intelligence tests, the booklet reads, demonstrate that “man, everywhere, is basically and fundamentally similar.” Putting aside the ideological agendas held by both Boas and Hooton, we are told in authoritative manner that every group will flourish if given the chance—­ the “favorable conditions of equal opportunity.” We are left to believe that the United States provides such an environment, and that subsequent pages prove it by listing hundreds of immigrants by field, underscoring contributions and inventions—­their “gifts.” The episodes on Jews and African Americans are without question the most uncomfortable fit to this ambitious series. There is a celebratory tone for the latter program, highlighting aspects of African American culture and noting that slavery was brutal and unlike the way that any other “immigrant” experienced the United States. Unfortunately, the text in the listening guide, which went to teachers and community groups across the nation, leans heavily on the “Negro Gifts” as quoted in the broadcast as “a rich sense of humor, a simple trusting religion, and a philosophy of life.” The guide goes on to say that “These gifts have kept them cheerful and hopeful through all kinds of setbacks. Their folk tales, folk songs, and spirituals have been a gift to the world as well as to the United States.” After a series of questions testing students about various famous Blacks and their inventions or sources of talent, there is a set of exercises that are almost unfathomable in their naivete. Teachers and community leaders from across the nation who ordered the supplemental materials were encouraged to implement ten assignments: “Arrange to have your glee club sing a group of Negro spirituals for an assembly program,” “Prove that the Negro excels as an athlete by giving the names of three well-­known Negro athletes,” or “Arrange for a debate: Resolved, ‘That the Negro’s philosophy of life would be an asset to any race, nation, or group.’” It’s difficult to imagine even the most enlightened teacher in a white school doing much more than buttressing problematic stereotypes, given the guidance of the teaching aid. Yet DuBois could only get so far in her battles with Seldes, and no doubt there were tightropes to walk, given that these were government documents and were meant to inspire and challenge with a light, upbeat touch.29 The listening guide for teachers awkwardly reinforced stereotypes of Jews in 1938, noting among their major contributions that Jews helped Christopher Columbus by funding his first expedition. In addition to fighting in wars alongside other Americans, we are reminded again of finance:

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“Outstanding among the Jews of the day [during the Revolutionary War] was Haym Salomon, who advanced large sums of money with which to carry on the war.” In terms of lesson plans and prompts for action, the pamphlet suggests that the reader might do some things that may have been difficult to accomplish in many areas of rural America of the 1930s, such as: “Give the names of Jews who have been prominent in the history of your community. Tell how each one served the community.” Number 12 on the list might have been a challenge as well: “Lecky, the historian, wrote that ‘Hebraic mortar cemented the foundations of American democracy.’ Discuss what he meant by this statement.”30 Jews always had money, although it is unclear how they accumulated it, something left to listeners’ imagination, an imagination antisemites were always happy to fill in. The bulk of the Americans All broadcasts were largely triumphant, emphasizing particular fields in which certain groups excelled, but making it seem a matter of their own talents and free choices (as opposed to “the Negro,” funneled by captors into cotton, tobacco, and sugar production). One example that does well in representing both tone and narrative approach of immigrant episodes is the program on “Near Eastern People,” which included Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians, and aired throughout the nation on March 12, 1939 (number 18). The program opens with original, patriotic music lauding America’s promise, the recognizable “anthem” for all episodes played at the start of a broadcast and at the close. A narrator provides some basic facts about the groups—­Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians; the bulk emigrated, fleeing political repression but seeking opportunity. He emphasizes that the story of immigration is a two-­way street: immigrants contribute to America, and America gives them opportunity and the chance for success. The narrator notes that people of all three nationalities came here long ago, some as original inhabitants of the Jamestown colony in the seventeenth century, and he lists the particular industries that these immigrants enhanced or built: Armenians in pursuit of linen and lace manufacturing, for example, or Greeks in pioneering the effective harvest of sponge in the waters of Tarpon Springs, Florida. The broadcast then launches into a variety of skits where a few actors play particularly successful immigrants and other actors portray what are clearly white, nonimmigrant Americans.31 In the first skit, an immigrant from an unidentified Near Eastern group is shining a nonimmigrant man’s shoes, and they get to talking. The customer wonders why a grown man (“a big boy”) is shining shoes, and the immigrant replies that he is just earning money for night school and hopefully law school, which satisfies the customer, who wishes him good

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Figure 5.3. Rehearsing for Americans All—­Immigrants All. The program came together quickly in the fall of 1938. Here, director Earle McGill rehearses the actors at the CBS studios. Scripts were written by the influential critic and writer Gilbert Seldes. Seldes also authored the program accompanying the Democracity exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair, as well as a huge number of critical essays, books, and plays throughout the mid-­twentieth century. Courtesy of the New York Public Library, Billy Rose Theater Division.

luck. We get to overhear conversations between white American mentors, in the case of Michael Anagnos, a Greek immigrant who went on to become a distinguished teacher and director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind, and a discourse by a Greek sponge fisherman explaining how it’s done to a local nonimmigrant Florida man. More contributions are rattled off, noting the importance of these immigrants to the sciences, medicine, the ministry, and the arts. At one point there is a skit in which two immigrants, peddling crucifixes and lace house-­to-­house, get a door slammed in their faces by a white woman. One immigrant says it would be more persuasive to put the crucifix on top of their pile of wares. They try it with the next housewife, who admires their approach and is glad to make a purchase. As the episode comes to a close, we drop in on a “meeting of young Armenians” who discuss “why they should be thankful at Christmas time.” One of the immigrants says that they should be thankful

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because “there is no social, economic, or racial intolerance in the United States” and that America lets immigrants keep the money they earn. They can all succeed if they bring the proper hardworking ethic and ambition. Before the closing music we are told by the narrator that immigrants make critical contributions to the country but they need to be grateful to us as well, saying a bit ominously, “As they become more and more a part of American life, their contributions must also become wider and fuller.” It’s a strange way to end the broadcast, given the litany of contributions across fields lauded throughout the episode—­a warning about the need for immigrants to be on good behavior and step up their work. From our vantage point in the twenty-­first century, it’s challenging to imagine why the program was so popular and engaging, given the clunky phraseology, saccharine patriotic hymns, and preachy narrator interventions. But the show moves along quickly, and the sketches are still often inspiring, even if the dialogue and accents often feel artificial. The program creators boasted about their pioneering style and approach, and it is the case that educational broadcasts before Americans All were so dry and pedantic that a show with storytelling and orchestral music was highly attractive and surprising. Because the series of programs was one of the earliest attempts at creating model, nationally broadcast infotainment in American history, there were a variety of tendencies and biases across the programs worth noting. For one, we can see why Rachel DuBois was rightly concerned about the overriding celebratory tone and lack of sustained attention to stereotyping and discrimination. There is minimal discussion of how, exactly, poor immigrants got by or what kind of treatment they realistically received in the process of adjusting. Most ironic is the fact that very few Armenians, Greeks, and Syrians were even allowed into the country in the aftermath of the draconian 1924 law. Before those quotas, people from the Near East came to the United States in the thousands each year. Yet after 1924, only 100 Greeks, 124 Armenians, and 100 Syrians were given the opportunity to try and settle. So although there were many people from these nations who had come over in previous decades, settling throughout the United States and having children, new immigration numbers from their hometowns and villages were miniscule.32 Most all of the broadcasts shared one narrative mechanism—­the immigrant-­meets-­nonimmigrant sketch, which took the same general shape: Immigrant and nonimmigrant (i.e., a white American) meet in a work setting—­often in sales, research, or education—­and the nonimmigrant is shocked by the talent and ambition of the immigrant. Invariably the nonimmigrant is taken aback by the positive way the immigrant is contributing to the task at hand and leaves with a changed and broad-

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ened opinion of the immigrant group. However, Americans All goes to great lengths in early episodes to note that, as per the program’s title, settled white Americans are themselves immigrants and shouldn’t feel somehow superior to newcomers. It is often said in episodes that Anglo-­Saxon Americans may have been in the United States much longer than newcomers, but they were immigrants too and should never forget it. These two notions—­that white Americans must be self-­aware of their own origins and the surprise that immigrants could possibly be so talented—­fit uncomfortably together. This was a tension even early on when the series was named. As Savage notes, the program title was changed from Immigrants All at the start of the project to Immigrants All—­Americans All, with the intent of stressing unity and not simply advocating for immigrants. In the end, the committee advising the series switched the title yet again to Americans All—­ Immigrants All to avoid the title being abbreviated to Immigrants All in radio listings in newspapers and magazines. Rachel DuBois wrote afterward: “The title change was necessary so that the D.A.R. [Daughters of the American Revolution] type of mind would not feel a loss of social security by being identified with the immigrant.”33

Mapping Immigrant America The Department of Education produced a map of where immigrants settled in the United States, and it appeared in both the listening guide sent free to anyone who requested it and in the much lengthier educational guide for teachers and organized groups—­immigrant associations, church groups, unions, and the like. The notion of publishing maps to illustrate population settlements in a spatial manner is a centuries-­old practice and of particular interest in the United States. For example, in 1903, the US Commission General of Immigration produced an extraordinary map of each state with colors and figures for each immigrant group—­how many lived in the state, their occupations, and the proportion of the national immigrant population their enclaves represented.34 Maps are social constructions because ideology, prejudices, and political strife are present in their creation; agendas underlie almost all maps, but particularly those involving human settlement.35 That said, the map produced for the broadcast was unusually imaginative and took some rather odd liberties with patterns of migration and settlement. It was a remarkable work of illustration for a government map, unique in its aesthetic, meant for adults and children alike. The Americans All—­Immigrants All map likely served as an efficient instructional tool for teachers so they could point out to students where immigrants settled and teach geography at the same time. But the map

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Figure 5.4. Map of immigrants from the Americans All—­Immigrants All companion guide. This map accompanied the broadcast recordings and the lengthy educational guide for use by teachers, and was also included in a listener’s guide. It seemed vitally important at the time to assign immigrants to particular regions as their preferred place, although it was highly imperfect in describing where immigrants settled and wanted to settle. Published by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of Education.

actually managed to undermine the general messages of Americans All with this geographical location of groups by casually reinforcing the more problematic biases of the broadcast. Most obvious is the containment of immigrant and minority groups, which might have given comfort to many American listeners: The map underscored where particular groups lived and implied that they would stay there. It is far easier to accept the existence of ethnic and racial others if they are tied to regions and not coming to your town. Immigrants are contained both by geography and type of work, so there isn’t much danger—­or so the map implies—­of them moving into your industry either. The Swiss cheesemakers, firmly situated in Wisconsin, won’t be coming to Boston to ply their trade or settle, and the Negroes are busy with tobacco and cotton down south. This 1938 map ignores all movements or possible movements of people, despite knowledge about these shifts. By the time the map was published, the “Great Migration” of African Americans was decades old; well over a million Blacks had moved from the South and its industries to northern cities of the East and Midwest. Equally problematic is the implication that Native Americans had chosen their lands when they had been forced

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to move from eastern and southern states to the far West by President Andrew Jackson. That the Seminoles were still represented as living in Florida, despite the forced relocation of many after the Seminole wars of resistance in the mid-­nineteenth century, is more than a slight inaccuracy given the history of violent struggle to keep their ancestral lands. The huge swath of land covered by “Negroes” is a dramatic flourish of the map, implying that they somehow dominated a region when they were bought and sold as slaves to work on plantations for the tobacco, sugar, and cotton harvests. They are tied to the land, defined by it, with no appearances elsewhere. African Americans are in fact one of the few populations that are bound to their musical gifts; their spirituals are oddly noted along the Mississippi, as if—­putting aside their labor—­their culture is geographically located and contained. (The only other groups producing music are the Germans, with their orchestras around Ohio, and Norwegian choirs in the upper Midwest.) This particular “gift” of the Negroes was emphasized heavily in the Americans All broadcasts to underscore their laudable upbeat nature despite the history of slavery. If African Americans could create such joyful, meaningful music, then slavery and poverty couldn’t have been quite that bad: their optimistic human spirit is a testament to their generalized good nature. Another outstanding part of the map is “Hollywood” in southern California, which is labeled “all groups.” Many immigrants and nonwhites had been drawn to the film industry, but they were hardly all equal players, and the studio executives as well as many actors (their names changed) were white, and Jewish in many cases. This particular fact—­that so many enterprising Jews had been critical in building the motion picture industry—­was a fraught one, and best left unmentioned. The giants of the film industry at the time, the Warner brothers, Louis B. Mayer, Adolph Zukor, the Selznicks, and others, had messy or troubled relationships with their religious heritages.36 Many had been brought up in Europe and others were second-­generation Americans who moved to Los Angeles, but their Jewish identities were not something to be celebrated in what was largely an antisemitic nation. Despite an episode of Americans All dedicated to the Jews, they are the only group entirely left off the map that accompanied the series. The uncomfortable fit to the program (recall that Jews were the only religious group portrayed in the series) was seemingly recognized when it came to drawing up the map, so leaving them off was a choice that would avoid raising the specter of Jewish integration and assimilation. The mapmaker would have to place Jews all over the nation to be accurate, and that would produce a picture of the nation as downright infiltrated by them. Obviously that is something well-­meaning progressives like Rachel DuBois or the AJC wanted to avoid at all costs.

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Mapped immigrant populations were, as in the broadcasts, tied to particular sectors of the labor market. It is made clear that the goods produced are critical ones for industrial production (Finns and iron ore in Minnesota, Poles and Slavs in the western Pennsylvania and New York steel industries) and for consumers (Armenian rug makers in New York, farmers in multiple regions). There is no mention of immigrants in occupations other than production, with a few odd exceptions (Irish are “public servants” around New York City), despite the fact that they were shopkeepers, teachers, businessmen, and clerical workers and were present in almost all aspects of the service industries wherever they settled. At least they were seen as productive, as opposed to Native Americans, who were portrayed as simply existing but not working. The Seminoles appear in Florida, represented in native dress, while the Navajo occupy some space in the far West, the Sioux in the upper Midwest, and scattered nameless Indians elsewhere, sometimes paired with tepees. The map was reproduced and put in the hands of tens of thousands of teachers, community groups, and individuals across the nation starting in 1938. Many more students were exposed to the maps as they were integrated into lesson plans. Besides sheer exposure, and the fact that the map was undoubtedly fun to look at, is that immigrants and African Americans are not on the move and stay put. Just as neighborhoods are redlined, and developers then and now find ways to sustain discriminatory housing practices in urban centers, entire parts of the nation were (in effect) redlined by the producers of Americans All. This spatial assignment of immigrants undermined the scripts, many of which seem bent on showing how immigrants are all around and have the same right to mobility as everyone else. In the same way that the broadcast series tries to match ethnicities with professions, the map ties them tightly to areas of the economy and to regions of the country, a sort of oppressive double confinement of labor and locale. This is the America that exists, the one we should expect. It is a safe and comfortable country if everyone respects the spatial boundaries by heritage. Finally, in this imaginary demographic ideal, the nation’s capital city of Washington, DC, is left out. All urban areas go unnamed, even though those were the places dense with immigrants, particularly on the East and West Coasts, in Chicago, and in other major midwestern cities. The nation here has no center of power or policy. America exists in a netherworld without governance at all, as a land characterized by the peaceful coexistence of so many varied peoples. The immigrants scattered throughout the nation have no business with government, it seems—­none look toward Washington. And why should they? They come to the United States, they find their correct spatial home, determined by their ethnicity and

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the labor pools they are meant to occupy. They are industrious people, with demands only to produce, in this illustrated world without government, banks, corporations, or freedom of movement.

Reception of Americans All—­Immigrants All Americans All—­Immigrants All is an extraordinarily useful window into so many aspects of American political culture in the 1930s given its timing, its novel character, and its wide national broadcast over many months. It is by far the premier exemplar of a bold approach to on-­air pedagogy, created and executed by the new “intercultural education” movement, giving this sort of instruction a legitimate place in the broader field of public education. In addition, it was among the first high-­profile, public-­facing communication projects on a national scale implemented by Roosevelt’s new education office, even if it was still under the auspices of the Department of the Interior (the Department of Education as a cabinet-­level agency was not established until 1979). The show would propel Rachel DuBois to contribute more. She would go on to lead a variety of other important projects in the area of cultural intolerance during her long life, and Americans All had enabled her to gain the legitimacy needed to continue her passionate dedication to more a diverse nation capable of tough dialogue. She was for decades a prolific advocate for conversation and exchange as a way to accelerate social justice and peace, very much in keeping with her Quakerism. The politics behind the creation of the series (e.g., arguments about how far to push the belief systems of listeners), before and after airing, were all revealing. As much as DuBois and her colleagues in the Jewish and Black communities wanted to use the opportunity to dispel stereotypes and discuss widespread discrimination using radio, they could only get so far, given the constraints that Studebaker had to work within. Studebaker’s office was highly dependent on Congress for appropriations. CBS may have provided actors, music, and broadcast time, but funds from the federal government were the only way to hire the expert staff and researchers needed to create the content. How did the three parties that mattered most—­Congress, the radio industry, and listeners—­see the series? We have strong evidence about Congress, which had to appropriate funds for the radio office because legislative dialogue is captured in records of hearings before appropriation committees. Another critical party was CBS and the radio industry more broadly, which watched closely to see whether future programs like Americans All could be successful from the standpoints of audience size and sponsorship. And then there was the listening public itself. Let us take each party in turn.

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Studebaker, a dedicated and experienced teacher, an author of books on education, and a former superintendent of schools from Iowa, was a great believer in civic, public discussion. He was successful enough to become Roosevelt’s first commissioner of education in 1934, a position he held until 1948 as a member of the Harry Truman administration. That he quickly understood Rachel DuBois’s vision for a program on immigration and tolerance reflected his ambitions. Like many progressive educators of the time he was inspired by John Dewey’s influential writings about the vital importance of public education and critical discussion in the quest for a successful, inclusive democracy. Studebaker had to learn the ropes in Washington, a town that was to become strongly divided over and exhausted by the mechanics and fraught politics of the New Deal. By the late 1930s, many Republican legislators and plenty of others within Roosevelt’s own party were suspicious of its aims to differing degrees. That Studebaker served so long is a testament to his talents as a political warrior, but turning radio into a sustained, inspiring Deweyesque tool in democratic socialization was a bridge too far in the end. There was not to be continuing programming like Americans All. Congress slashed Studebaker’s budget for education programming and eliminated the Radio Education Project altogether. Many congressional leaders didn’t see the value in this sort of broadcasting, and Studebaker’s office did not have success in private fundraising, despite some contributions from the Carnegie Foundation and the AJC. Even though the series was seen as innovative and engaging, with much positive fanfare for such an unusual experiment, congressmen opposed to the New Deal saw the content as propagandistic and stopped appropriations for educational radio. In a congressional discussion in February 1939, in the midst of Americans All, Studebaker went before the subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, only to be subjected to sarcastic questioning by Congressman James Fitzpatrick of New York: Studebaker: We have one program  .  .  . “Americans All—­Immigrants All,” in which we are attempting to show that the kind of Americanism we all want is that kind which respects our differences of religion and race and nationality, and that within the concept of American democracy there is ample opportunity for each earnest and honest person to develop himself, and that we don’t all need to be alike. Mr. Fitzpatrick: Of course, in that you believe in the capitalistic form? Studebaker: We are not going into the economic aspects of this thing now. We are merely showing . . . aspects of this thing now. We are merely showing . . .

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Mr. Fitzpatrick: You know, Doctor, we hear a great deal now about producing for use only. Producing for profit is the capitalistic viewpoint. I was just wondering if any of your broadcasts have dwelt on matters of this kind.37

Fitzpatrick may or may not be hinting at disregard for the content of the program. But his question does reflect the notion, well entrenched by 1939, that the government shouldn’t be pursuing a radio program of any sort if it wouldn’t make a profit. There was no stomach in Congress for the development of a federal radio channel, even though a variety of practical government reports were aired on local stations (the “Farm and Home” hour was aired every weekday on one hundred local NBC affiliates, for example). Radio stations would duly broadcast government pleas to buy bonds or occasional important speeches in Congress. FDR showed no sign of wanting to develop a dedicated channel for radio; he had airtime whenever he needed it. His ongoing war with print media publishers made him an avid, enthusiastic partner to the radio industry. As one writer put it in 1939, “If the New Deal made political radio, it is likewise true that political radio made the New Deal.”38 In 1940, congressional suspicion had solidified to the point where Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois called the Radio Education Project “clap trap and tommy rot” and said that the Office of Education’s radio division was “nothing but a political bureau.”39 Studebaker received letters from senators concerned about the content of Americans All but he kept at it, eventually appealing directly to the president and Mrs. Roosevelt and making an argument for the program as helpful in the nation’s defense with the oncoming war, presumably to maintain national cohesion. This appeal was unsuccessful, although it likely laid some groundwork for future federal communication efforts during the war that underscored the need for unity.40 The radio industry was not a monolith except in regard to government regulation, where it spoke loudly and with a united voice. The shared goal of local radio owners and big networks was to maintain as much freedom as possible, but they understood and accepted that regulation of the dial by the Federal Communications Commission was unavoidable: very real possibilities existed for both a “Wild West” fight among broadcasters and dangers of destructive radio content in the hands of demagogues. By 1939 the nation saw the rise and fall of Father Coughlin (he was forced off the air by the federal government) as well as Hitler’s effective use of radio, so fears of warmongering or anti-­American propaganda were in the air, and radio leaders wanted no part of it. Encouraging fan mail poured into CBS offices, and the show won a major national award for original programming. The series was also a new

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moment for the radio industry, hence the Radio Guide’s enthusiastic article of 1938 titled “Uncle Sam Schoolmaster.” There had been some dabbling of radio programming in multiculturalism (in today’s language) as a social phenomenon, but nothing even close to Americans All. Although the 1930s are called the Golden Age of Radio, the surprise appearance of Americans All indicated that neither the public nor the industry had conceived of radio as anything but a means to entertain and advertise. No one to that point had seen major potential for “infotainment” produced by teachers partnering with federal bureaucrats. CBS had now stuck a toe in the water, marrying the popular narrative style and music of 1930s radio dramas with research and advocacy for immigrants. They realized it was possible to open up the medium for more serious programming.

What Did Listeners Think? Americans All—­Immigrants All most definitely had effects on broadcasters, who noted that educational radio programs could be entertaining and engaging. Hence, the program opened minds of the influential station owners who controlled the content of the airwaves. Not only could educational programs avoid the dry, unimaginative style of previous government programs, but social subjects that were so highly fraught at the time—­ racism and antisemitism—­could be broached without horrendous effects and bad publicity for radio as a medium. Educators and advocates for pedagogy through radio were tremendously pleased with the reception, and hundreds of K–­12 teachers across the nation asked for supplemental materials. Scores of advocacy organizations and ethnic newspapers wrote to request the listening guide, such as the Danish Brotherhood of Philadelphia, the Syrian Lebanon American Clubs of Texas, the NAACP of New York, and the National Council of Jewish Women (four different chapters). Labor unions requested information, as did service organizations, religious groups, and “patriotic” organizations like the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States. Individual listeners wrote in as well, although their letters to the Office of Education’s radio division are lost to history. Fortunately, an ambitious graduate student in Washington named Dorothea Seelye evaluated more than eighty-­one thousand requests for free Americans All booklets for her master’s thesis in 1941. Most requests were straightforward, but thousands included their reactions with comments ranging from the simple and emotional to others that were lengthy and intellectually rich. Seelye conducted some odd quantitative analysis that is difficult to replicate, but it is clear that she was heavily influenced by the early work on radio

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by pioneering sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld. Letters and answers to particular queries demonstrated substantial attitude reinforcement.41 In any case, the scores of listener letter excerpts that Seelye reproduced—­ comments that she argued represent the larger corpus—­are fascinating. Many audience reactions were emotional, like these two, from listeners in Ohio and Wisconsin, respectively: [After explaining that they live in the country and have listened to several episodes]: My husband summed it up when he said, “when I hear that I feel all choked up and want to cry, yet I am so happy inside that I could shout and sing, and laugh, thanking God that I live in America founded and built by Immigrants All, who have become Americans All.”42 [The program gives our family] a thrill and a tingling sensation up and down our spine, a feeling of elation and exhilaration that cannot be matched by anything any other country of the world offers.43

Others wished listening to the broadcast was mandatory for all, like these writers from New York and Illinois: If this nation were a totalitarian state, which praise be it is not, and if I were the dictator, which thank heaven I am not, I would command my subjects to listen in on Americans All, Immigrants All. But can you imagine such a program on the air in a totalitarian state?44 If by some magic every person living within the borders of the United States, could be induced to listen to the wonderful portrayal of your broadcast of “Americans All—­Immigrants All” this, I believe, really would be a means of making every one here in the U.S. a real true American, without the Prejudice against others they now show.45

There was significant mail from immigrants, Jews, and African Americans who were inspired and touched by the program. Black listeners, these from New York and Illinois, respectively, wrote: As a member of the Negro race I was extremely gratified at your fair and unbiased portrayal of the parts my race have played in helping to make America a better place. . . . I feel that your program is a forerunner to the fulfillment of our dreams.46 It was truly the best of its kind that I have heard broadcast yet, and no doubt Booker Washington turned over in his grave with pride.47

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Figure 5.5. Harlem residents listen to the radio in the 1930s. African Americans and Jews were included as “immigrants” in the Americans All—­Immigrants All broadcasts, despite the difficulty in fitting them to this category.

Many were moved by Americans All. We do not have the numerous letters that certainly came directly to local radio stations; it was common to write the local broadcaster. And then, as now, listeners with strong feelings are more likely to write than those less affected. Much like the letters to President Roosevelt and the First Lady, letters to CBS about Americans All were written on everything from ragged scraps of paper to beautiful stationery, and from the many letters Seelye quoted, they look to be from many different socioeconomic groups. The comments are compelling in their emotion and their genuine belief in a civics textbook–­ type democracy—­open, inspiring and working for anyone with the will to be part of a great nation. Equality and justice were brought up by many readers, whether immigrants themselves, ethnic minorities, or whites who were taken aback to learn of so much intolerance. Some listeners wrote bluntly about their own naivete, grateful to the program for forcing them into self-­reflection about their own views and behaviors.

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Immigrants, Publics, and Public Opinion Most episodes of Americans All—­Immigrants All tackled the challenges of particular immigrant groups and lauded their outstanding contributions—­how they enhanced the nation in their adopted American towns, their work to tame wilderness and create productive farmland in the Midwest and West, and the great men who rose from their ethnic group ranks. Although to our reading here in 2021 the Negro episode’s descriptions of slavery’s horrors seems a light touch, the episode did at least raise the challenges of prejudice lingering from slavery, thanks to Rachel DuBois’s efforts and consultation with leading Black intellectuals. It worked toward an uplifting and straightforward narrative, matching the immigrant chapters by concluding that African Americans were vital to the economic development of the nation. There were a few episodes that tried to take a broader sweep and address immigration more generally. It is here that we find confusing, anxiety-­laden messages about immigration and nationhood common in the 1930s and persistent to this day. The producers of the series—­ sophisticated educators, progressive government leaders like Studebaker, and the executives at CBS—­may have believed in their approach as open and liberal about immigrants and minorities, but the overall proimmigrant argument was muddled. Worse than that, the general view of immigration in the series, despite the “cultural gifts” that many brought to the United States, was so difficult to manage that it led to a variety of inaccurate historical narratives. One of the general programs is episode 12, “Closing Frontiers.” This episode is a hodgepodge of a story, sweeping through three contentious decades from the land rush of 1893 to the union strife of the early twentieth century. In the first skit, a farmer and his wife are perched with other homesteaders in their wagons, waiting to rush into Oklahoma to stake their claim under the Homestead Acts. This was one of the last “land rushes” of the century, made possible by the sale of over 8 million acres to the federal government by the Cherokees (sometimes called the “Cherokee Strip Land Run”). In this part of the episode, native-­born Americans wait to spring into the new land, as do Germans, Mexicans, “Orientals,” and Scandinavians. So there is unity of purpose, with tens of thousands of families poised at the Kansas border hoping to grab precious acreage to settle for themselves, with cavalry and soldiers present to prevent chaos. The next two sections of the episode race quickly through subsequent political events, with scant attention to immigrants. We are told that many homesteaders failed in their settlement attempts due to the arid conditions of western land, so difficult to farm. Even with government help in irrigating the land, other problems plagued farmers in the West and the

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South—­high rates to ship crops on railroads, mechanization leading to overproduction of crops, a credit crisis that resulted in widespread debt and foreclosures, and the low pricing of goods produced, among other challenges. (These were the very roots of the Populist Party in the 1890s, which gained enormous steam. The populists—­the “People’s Party”—­ opposed the gold standard favored by bankers, proposed a government takeover of the railroads and communication infrastructure, fairness in taxation, direct elections of US senators, secret balloting in elections, and harsher restrictions on immigration.) We are then brought quickly to the final section of the episode: With the lack of free land after the early 1890s, farmers “fell back.” Industrialization was everywhere, and no states were purely agricultural, so immigrants were needed for mines and mills. There is a discussion (among characters) of whether bringing in more immigrants is a good thing or not, but it is not resolved. At one point an engineer says to a factory owner, “Get your agent in New York to send you out a hundred immigrants—­or maybe you can get them right from Europe. . . . Just try it out with a hundred . . . you’ll be asking for thousands in a year.” Immigrants came in droves, we are told, but few from the United Kingdom and Germany because their own industries were expanding. (The bulk of immigrants in the early years of the twentieth century came from Italy, Hungary, the Balkans, and the Near East.) As free land disappeared and movement was to the cities, immigrants crowded tenements, and native-­born Americans organized unions, fighting for better wages and conditions. While not addressed, we know that a significant sector of the union movement at the time—­the American Federation of Labor, for example—­fiercely opposed immigration because immigrants would work for lower wages than native-­born Americans and would break strikes, reducing the effects of those strikes. The episode ends as President Teddy Roosevelt intervenes with arbitration to end disastrous coal strikes and the labor situation is brought to peace and calm. As with all the episodes, there is upbeat resolution despite quick and incomplete historical telling. The graduated income tax appears, women are given the right to vote, railways are regulated, child labor laws are introduced, factories are regulated, and antitrust laws are passed and implemented. There is no talk of the most damaging anti-­immigrant legislation in American history after the Chinese Exclusion of 1882—­those low, strict quotas of the 1924 Johnson-­Reed Act, which profoundly affected every ethnicity.48 Oddly, an entire series bent on introducing the positive contributions of immigrants and their critical importance to the nation ignores the fact that two major populist movements—­the agriculture-­ based Populist Party of the 1890s and the labor movement of the early twentieth century—­were distinctly anti-­immigrant.

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No doubt that writer Gilbert Seldes and others involved in conceptualizing the broader project thought it better to leave anti-­immigration sentiment out when they could. In this, they (perhaps unconsciously) used Americans All—­ the first major national attempt to teach Americans about immigration—to submerge nativism. This narrative choice avoided the ugly face of anti-­ immigrant discrimination under the surface of a six-­month-­long, widely broadcast immigrant success story. It was a way to avoid controversy, but it had the effect of underplaying the antitolerance theme, precisely what Rachel DuBois had worried about from the start of the project. She lost the battle for more transparency about xenophobia to the more positive tack of Seldes, but this dynamic would become the way of American politics for decades, where immigration politics are the seething underbelly of our allegedly welcoming democracy. The fierce fight about the place of immigrants in the social fabric of the 1930s was crushed in Americans All because the series simply would not have been produced by CBS or aired by any station in 1939 had it taken on the most fraught matters more directly. Across the centuries, bruising national battles over immigration come to the fore, go silent, then rise to the surface in new forms, just as they have in our present moment. Reformers like Rachel DuBois took advantage of the relatively sublimated immigration strife of the 1930s because immigration rates were crushingly low, thanks to the 1924 law. It was a somewhat calm window ripe for public education, no doubt, but in reality it was a time when untold millions of immigrants knocked softly but futilely on American doors. Most important in thinking about the public: despite the pride it gave so many immigrants, African Americans, and Jews, the program somehow did not argue for broad acceptance or citizenship. The series underscores that immigrants and their children, as well as Blacks and Jews, were all living parallel to the American public with great moments of peaceable intersection. “Others” are admirable, the program narratives clearly note, but their contributions do not make them part of the public or public opinion in any sense. As I argued above, in the spirit of so much literary and media analysis of texts, we must evaluate what is present and often, more importantly, what is missing. The program is revealing from both perspectives. Among the more obvious problems of the series is its lauding of immigrant contributions, but doing that within fairly strict parameters: French-­ Canadians work in the New England lumber camps and mills; Chinese and Japanese bring “artistic sensibility” and work the railroad, the ranch, and the factory; Scandinavians (Swedes, Norwegians, and Finns) introduce log cabins, new dairy methods, and gymnastics; and Italians work the trades, including marble quarry labor. It was our “English heritage” that brought “rich experiences in self-­government and basic liberties.” The

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series was so focused on itemizing the specific contributions of nonnative whites that there was no inclination to mention their (second-­generation) children, Blacks, or Jews as members of an American public. The writers found it difficult to reconcile their intense commitment to the particularities of the groups and their gifts to democratic practice—­all the citizenly contributions that would fall outside their typical labor areas. Serious talk of immigrants as members of the body politic was nebulous at best. To speak of them as any sort of political force that might elect people of their culture to legislatures or governorships would likely have been blocked by the network as too controversial, regardless of whether there was ever any serious conversation like this during script development. Seldes and the producers decided to put a heavy focus on the most distinguished individual immigrants as representatives of their people, race, or religion—­a painless trope. This was inspiring in some regards because, taken together across the twenty-­six episodes, there are hundreds of inventors, leaders of industry, basic scientists, medical researchers, actors, artists, musicians, and prominent others called out for their contributions. These run from the most famous to the important, who may not have been household names but were accomplished, distinguished individuals recognized during their lives as such. For example, Hideyo Noguchi, the Japanese bacteriologist who identified the roots of syphilis; the Russian composer Ossip Gabrilowitsch; and the Danish architect William Hovgaard were listed, along with Albert Einstein (a Jew), George Washington Carver (a Negro), and Charles Lindbergh (a Scandinavian). Each episode on a nationality, as well as the Negro and Jewish episodes, flipped back and forth between describing a vital contribution by a great man (there were few women) and extolling the talents of a common member of the group (an unnamed salesman or laborer) interreacting with a white American in everyday life. We get a glimpse of the most high-­achieving members of the group and the more modest, working-­ class ones, usually fulfilling the desperate yet well-­mannered immigrant role. Yet there are not many people in between: often missing are teachers, nurses, businessmen, shopkeepers, or other members of the middle class. Even more glaring is the inability of the program to move from individual-­level struggles and triumphs to the more sociological matters, particularly the discrimination against entire groups, stereotypes that put them below or above other nationals, not to mention the everyday antisemitism and racism that were far different in character than what, say, the typical Swedish immigrant might have faced. The structure of the program equalized the groups: no one had it better or worse because all immigrants and their children were the same in their traits and ambitions. This was true as well for Jews and Blacks.

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There are many instances in the listener guides and the program where the phrase “we are all in the same boat now” or something like it was repeated, as if simply living in the United States and building a life would enable all to gain acceptance on a level playing field. Finally, one of the more perverse aspects of the series was the treatment of “Orientals,” given that there were harsh restrictions on Chinese immigration starting in 1882, with a total ban on all Asian immigrants instituted in 1924. It is a puzzle why Asians, considering the small number arriving in the 1930s and the particularly strong prejudice against them, were given a cheerful episode, or any episode at all: America had already decided they were to be kept out. Yet DuBois was nothing if not comprehensive in her approach to intercultural education, and despite the restrictions there were plenty of second-­generation offspring of Asian immigrants who had built mature communities, particularly the Chinatowns of San Francisco and New York. In Americans All the Chinese and Japanese immigrants shared the same program because neither apparently warranted their own episode. The two groups were spoken about a bit differently because the highlighted Japanese immigrant became a successful scientist (the bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi) and no similarly successful Chinese immigrant was singled out. Both cultures were seen as good-­natured, hardworking, and happily jumping at any opportunity for a job, even if it meant filling in for striking workers. They were pure of spirit, unproblematic, indistinguishable from each other, and modest in that mysterious but nonthreatening way of the Orient. The Americans All story about the Chinese begins in the 1850s with the California Gold Rush, during which the Chinese are seen as useful in supporting miners by cooking and washing for them (they were feminized—­ seen as replacements for wives of gold rushers, who had stayed home). Next, there is a fictional conversation between railroad magnate Leland Stanford and his associate on how to get more labor in the 1860s for the transcontinental railroad construction in progress. As Stanford puts it, upon hearing how difficult the work is to build tracks on ground with steep slopes: “By heaven, I don’t think there’s a better worker on the railroad than those Chinese we’ve got.  .  .  . Tell the contractors to get more . . . a lot more!”49 This is one episode that most clearly characterizes the tensions running throughout the series and the larger immigration conundrum at the time. The audience was told that Orientals are useful immigrants, precious to us as we build a booming nation, while also exceedingly grateful to us as master—­a gratitude they show us regularly. They are human, but not fully so, objects not subjects. The Chinese and Japanese are not afraid of hard work. Far from it, hard work is their key attribute as human beings.

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Figure 5.6. The Yellow Peril. A cartoon from 1889 depicting brutal Chinese triumph over the West. Anti-­Chinese sentiment in the United States was extraordinary in the nineteenth century, hence the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which was signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur. It was the first-­ever American law banning entry of a specific ethnic group to the country. Chinese people could not become citizens, no matter their length of residency, when the law was passed.

Their ambitions and agency are fully within the lanes that we choose for them, whether that is working in science labs, building railroads, or irrigating desert land to make it useful for agriculture. Balancing immigrant attributes with the pervasive discrimination against them was the tightrope that John Studebaker, Rachel DuBois, and others walked. Their strategy, the axis around which all the intercultural education goals revolved, was to repeat in myriad ways how immigrants are a powerful force

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for political economy, even if the overall plan is devised by white Americans. There are few instances, in any episode of the series, of immigrants shaking up a discipline in any particularly challenging way, as they are meant to succeed only in the confines of a world already defined. They delight us with how well they fulfill their American “assignments,” for lack of a better word, and although we admire their skills, they must always be used within our guardrails. With the exception of the Negroes, who began their American journey as slaves, the episode on Asians is the only episode in which an ethnic group is seen largely as human chattel.

* The central goal of this book is to track how and why a variety of leaders and institutions tried to will “the public” and “public opinion” into existence in the 1930s. In the case of Americans All—­Immigrants All, the agents were educators, the commissioner of education in the Roosevelt administration, and CBS, which made substantial investments in production and distribution. It was the first major attempt at mass-­mediated intercultural education, aired broadly across the land over seven months. And those seven months were fraught, as America tried shakily to survive the worse remnants of economic decline and faced the reality of another war in Europe, so soon after the carnage of the Great War. The major parties in the production of the series, not to mention the many consultants, librarians, staffers, scholars, writers, and immigrant advocacy groups, created a masterpiece for its day, an achievement for certain. Yet despite the radical tolerance of Rachel DuBois, John Studebaker, and others, the series was very much of its time with regard to the biases and limits of the American imagination. It is far too complicated a cultural artifact to deem a success or a failure, because it was both. Most important for us was how this program, from production to reception, characterized immigrants and minorities in relation to the new field of public opinion expression and research. Americans All and the rhetorical struggle over immigration must be seen in the context of burgeoning public opinion measurement of the 1930s. All adults, immigrants included, were regularly queried in Gallup and Roper surveys, but ironically they were not really considered part of the public in a sociological manner—­the space where we all live and operate. In the framework of Americans All, the public does include immigrant beings, but they are not full members of it. Omitted from Americans All is talk of voting, of achieving full citizenship, of changing the polity in any significant way. The goal was thought to be assimilation in the most rudimentary senses: America wanted their labor, their talents, their “gifts,”

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but not their opinions or political participation. Immigrants were meant to blend and gain acceptance, but not to shape a nation. The metaphor many have used, that of a glass bubble with immigrants peering in to see an American public they hoped to join, doesn’t describe the broadcast. Instead, immigrants, their children, and nonwhites weren’t even trying to join up. They were never portrayed as seeking a voice. Who is thought to belong in the public, and whose voices compose public opinion? A helpful distinction is between “ethnic” nationalism and “civic” nationalism, where the former means solidarity among people based on shared ethnic and racial identity and cohesion. Civic nationalism, by contrast, is where one’s sense of self revolves around citizenship. Some scholars have argued that ethnic nationalism, as a norm, is exclusive: It is about keeping out others who don’t fit a culture, whereas civic nationalism is inclusive, bent on inclusion. Put another way, subtraction of people is the realistic effect of ethnic nationalism, but civic nationalism is about addition and expansiveness—­a belief that all are welcomed into the polity. This type of distinction is an ideal type and therefore imperfect. One can think of a variety of permutations and configurations where the two paradigms overlap. (An example in modern memory is the case of Nazi Germany, where ethnic and civic nationalism were conflated. The Nazis sought an Aryan nation in which citizens shared state and race.)50 For our purposes these are helpful categories because Americans All falls right in the middle, poised problematically between ideal types. Immigrants, Blacks, and Jews are different, we are told, albeit in a good way. We don’t expect their cultures to change or disappear, as they are what make such groups joyful and interesting to us. Every group has its tremendous talents, leaders, willingness to build communities, and country. Their customs, foods, cultures, and holidays are lauded. It is not expected that they become white, metaphorically, and be fully assimilated as citizens. They are defined by their own ethnicities in enclaves located across the nation, and we are encouraged to welcome them as neighbors, doctors, workers, colleagues, and shopkeepers, helping to run the nation in the most pleasant and mundane ways. Some immigrants mentioned in the “hall of fame”–­type discourse of Americans All programs and pamphlets are legislators and even governors, like Al Smith, seen as Irish despite having been born in New York City.51 Yet immigrants are seemingly stateless in any political sense. Immigrants themselves, certainly African Americans and Jews, understood well that they were precisely located in this netherworld. This was not an intentionally created purgatory created on the part of producers, but simply reflective of the tensions and anxieties about immigrants at the time, which were shared even among the most progressive East Coast sophis-

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ticates. Immigrants and minorities didn’t quite belong in either ethnic or civic senses, although they were celebrated as economic, scientific, and cultural (in the sense of artistic talent) contributors. They belonged to America as a growing economy only, not as a polity. Immigrants were an uncomfortable fit to “the public,” and as one would expect, the same was true with regard to their voices in a public opinion that channels national sentiment. As the renowned sociologist Herbert Blumer argued in the 1940s, the new opinion surveying may have been attractive packages to sell to newspapers or efficient tools for social scientists. Yet polling as a practice ignored what mattered most: the vital, real opinions and activities of social groups on the ground. Both Blumer and Lippmann before him saw the dangerous artifice of aggregating individual, anonymous opinions in order to create public opinion. In such a world, how could immigrants or ethnic minorities matter at all as members of the public? What Blumer worried about most was that opinion polling and surveying both ignore power, lack of power, social structure, class, and the interconnected functional groups that constitute a society. This is a noxious problem if one is trying to understand what a public really looks like—­the powerful groups and those suppressed. Blumer’s insights have only become more salient over time as we see who is effective, who is listened to, and who gets their way in everyday America politics. As he put it more than seventy years ago, polling cannot capture power dynamics: “As every sociologist ought to know and as every intelligent layman does know, a society has an organization. It is not a mere aggregation of disparate individuals. A human society is composed of diverse kinds of functional groups. . . . The formation of public opinion occurs in large measure through the interaction of groups.”52 Although critics of polling and surveying rightly focus on some obvious problems (nonresponse, how question wording and survey forms can warp data collection, or how polling assumes too much knowledge on the part of respondents), the most important deficit of polling has remained the same since the 1930s: surveying can never predict the course of society or social policy because it ignores power and wealth on the ground in any community or nation. In the 1930s, while programs like Americans All struggled mightily to place immigrants—­somehow—­on the American map, pollsters went about their business as if such a struggle didn’t exist. This unresolved conundrum, the actual place of ethnic minorities in an American public—­what space they occupied in the polity—­is with us today, albeit in different forms. Surely it cannot be “solved” by asking survey respondents about their race, ethnicity, or income and then using those factors in predictive equations. This cross-­tabulation is hardly

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what Blumer meant. It gets nowhere near the analyses of groups and their power to make change for themselves, or to change a nation. These are issues for chapter 7, but with regard to struggles over immigration and the tolerance of nonwhite, nonnative people more generally, Americans All is a remarkable window into the birth of something we call public opinion. The series is silent on the matter of immigrants’ real influence, as were the polls of the time, and while it invites them to bring us their science, their arts, and their brawn, the series does not ask for their politics or for their contributions to democracy based in self-­rule. They are welcomed as workers, not citizens, and this particular view in the 1930s was greatly reinforced, even in the most progressive mass media project about “the other” ever attempted to that point. We can draw many straight lines from Americans All and the struggles over diversity and tolerance circa 1939 to our situation in 2021 because the question of where immigrants and minorities fit into the public, and whether they matter in something we call “public opinion,” is still as murky and as vital as ever.

6 * Interlude

A Depression Needn’t Be So Depressing

Success, for any sane adult, is exactly equivalent to doing his best. What that best may be, what its farthest reaches may include, we can discover only by freeing ourselves completely from the Will to Fail.

Dorothea Brande, Wake Up and Live!, 1936

Well, who isn’t poor?

Marjorie Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget: Or Live Smartly on What You Have, 1937

One of the most interesting and important ways the American public was shaped in the 1930s has been absent from the academic study of politics: the burgeoning ideology of self-­improvement. Showing personal agency, grit, and determination were essential to the American consciousness from the nation’s start, and so the rewards of these qualities were deeply lodged in culture, politics, and literature by the early twentieth century. Although it seems perverse to us now that a people, slammed by an economic disaster of epic proportion, could still adhere to any form of Horatio Alger–­style mythology, it was a dominant logic during the Depression years. Some fought this. Their own formidable president was a fighter, arguing that the stock market crash and general hardship were due to problematic actors—­the previous administration, rich Wall Street speculators, corrupt bankers, and greedy titans of industry. Despite the list of deplorable villains, there was tremendous shame and self-­blame throughout American communities, regardless of what Roosevelt said. Citizens were accustomed to the primacy of self-­reliance. It was a common framework of beliefs, and it was customary to internalize failure in such a forward-­ looking, pioneering nation. Throughout the public discourse of the 1930s there was a constant swinging of attitudes back and forth between two poles: blaming government and institutions, and blaming oneself. A nation built on grit and determination does not suddenly adopt a contrary view, even as Roosevelt outlined precisely how larger forces had failed the people. And so most Americans navigated micro-­and macro-­level

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explanations and hypotheses as best they could, in the moments when they felt like thinking about root causes for America’s plight. After all, who wouldn’t question their own shortcomings—­even during years of systemic mass unemployment and poverty—­when there were still some people that, somehow, were getting by better? The chronic human tendency toward social comparison was as strong as ever in the 1930s and tremendously damaging to the millions who floundered. As is evident in so much correspondence and oral history from the Depression years, it was difficult for many to understand (or believe) the dramatic failure of institutions and the complex series of dynamics that led to the crash. This was in part because the explanations themselves were fluid and evolving as politicians, economists, industry leaders, clergy, and other public figures fought about causes and remedies.1 Americans sought relief in myriad ways in order to find paying work, put meals on the table, and discover entertainment that might allay stress, at least intermittently. Aside from baseball, music, and the inexpensive pastimes people always had (e.g., playing cards, sewing, exercise), the entertainment industry certainly did its part: tens of millions of Americans went to the movies multiple times a week through the Depression because admission was cheap.2 Those distractions were fleeting, and people knew it. Where did they look for larger ideas that might be useful, compelling routes to a better everyday existence? It was inevitable that they would need to turn inward, if not to look for causes of their struggle than to find ways out—­new approaches to thinking that might endure. Public relief programs were extensive and they were welcomed, but government programs wouldn’t be enough in a country of strivers raised on self-­reliance narratives.

Self-­H elp, 1930s Style Why a foray into self-­help in a book about politics and public opinion? To my mind a brief detour is both critical and inevitable. In the United States there has always been a drive to self-­improvement and “getting ahead,” although the language used, the sensibilities, and the nature of the tactics varied tremendously across generations and peoples. But the 1930s are a period during which the harsh reality of poverty, struggle, and uncertainty—­all in the context of an increasingly literate public and rapidly changing publishing industry—­led many authors and inspirational figures to focus on the here and now. As Roosevelt, the pollsters, educators, and industrialists strived to create a public to their liking, so too did a group of entrepreneurs, publishers, writers, academics, and amateur psychologists. They sought to build, then speak to and profit from, a

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public searching for psychic calm and hope. Any story about the birth of modern public opinion in the 1930s would be incomplete without exploring, even if briefly, the gravitational pull of hope as embedded in cultural notions of individual betterment. The decade was characterized by fear and uncertainty, but understanding how people coped, or tried to, helps to round out the extraordinarily complex, nuanced texture of an evolving American public. Self-­improvement was also a nonideological form of activity that felt comfortable to many, if not most people of the era, as opposed to political activity. Opportunities for political activism were plentiful, especially in urban areas, but in small towns as well. There were labor unions, political parties, and radical organizations that welcomed Americans hungry for change. The astonishingly rapid growth of Huey Long’s Share Our Wealth Society, with 27,431 clubs and 7.5 million members nationwide in 1935, is one example of a populist association that was easy to find and join.3 But these were political causes that in many cases demanded public engagement—­picket lines, fundraising door-­to-­door, canvassing for votes, meeting attendance, and the like. By contrast, making plans for self-­improvement was an easier way to change one’s life in difficult times, albeit one that was personal, not explictly about community or country. Focusing on workplace success, on relaxation, and on coping provided a way to be legitimately and actively American without the hardship and gumption that comes with making structural change in one’s community or nation. There is a long history of self-­improvement activity in America. The “rags-­to-­riches” narrative, for instance, is a founding myth of America. Its most eloquent spokesperson was Benjamin Franklin, a man that fin de siècle sociologist Max Weber believed embodied “homo americanus.”4 Self-­ discipline would make one successful, as it did for Franklin, a striver of modest means who went on to excel in the new nation. A free country was one full of opportunity and mobility, such very different terrain than the staid, oppressive, class-­conscious European old country. This array of possibilities was central to discussions of a uniquely American character in the eighteenth century and it reads well still, in our own time. As a generally hopeful people Americans have a tendency toward success-­ through-­hard-­work formulas, so these themes are omnipresent in literature, film, and nonfiction. Alexis de Tocqueville and James Bryce, the nineteenth-­century visitors discussed in chapter 1, were among those who found the hard work creed to be uniquely American, and so they pointed to it repeatedly. Weber noted it as well in his American travels of the early twentieth century. Indeed, he looked to the United States as the premier location for the study

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of financial striving and economic development in the context of Protestantism: it was the American example that was most pure in piecing together the way that religious ideas were translated into creeds, institutions, and human action.5 All three visitors elaborated on how Americans were driven to success in vocation and avocation, very often to the detriment of political talk or interest in intellectual matters. Tocqueville put all of this in contrast to Europeans, whereas Bryce more often contrasted the essential characteristics with what was expected from the ideal democratic citizen (we fell short, but in a pleasant, good-­natured way). Americans of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century were a largely unsettled people who would relocate in a blink for a better place and better prospects, Bryce noted. This was exacerbated by much varied immigration before the 1920s as newcomers took on the same striving and willingness to move as had the native born. Moving up almost invariably demanded moving on. These days, nearly a century after the Depression began, self-­help ideology in myriad forms is a fundamental aspect of American culture. From the enormous popularity of the Oprah Winfrey enterprises to the massive number of books, magazines, videos, articles, websites, and seminars that purport to help Americans become thinner, happier, healthier, richer, and more successful, we just believe in self-­help and agency. But it was all less clearly circumscribed in the 1930s because any notion of “taking control” of one’s destiny and marching to triumph was persistently undercut by desperation. Film and radio were for entertainment and the New Deal programs were to be the basis for economic salvation, but therapy and inspiration for the average citizen was wanting until the appearance of a variety of books and manuals that were meant to fill the gap. During the Depression, books would lead as the medium most suited to the notion of “self-­help,” even though the term did not become commonplace until much later in the century. Books were the right vehicle because they could make a sustained argument, an argument one could reflect on, hold close, and share with others. And book content was accessible: reading was widespread due to the penetration of public schools everywhere in America, uneven in quality as schools were. In the 1930s, illiteracy rates were low and falling; they were under 3 percent by 1940. Despite their own financial battles to stay afloat, publishers large and small sought to provide books, magazines, fiction, and nonfiction of all sorts that might sell. At least three strands of book-­length popular guidance appeared in the 1930s, written by businessmen, psychologists, university professors, public relations professionals, and journalists. The first sort of book was therapeutic in nature and focused on physical well-­being. These works

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(and also articles in newspapers and magazines) provided hints, rules, systems, and even demonstrations of how to reduce stress and cope better with life’s challenges. A second, closely related narrative thread in this inchoate self-­help period was advice on how to get nice things, how to avoid acting or looking impoverished, and how to keep up appearances, even in moments of extraordinary self-­doubt. There was a “life is short” mentality woven through many of those texts, warning people that they needed to enjoy every day and worry less or time would slip by. Critically, this particular type of self-­help crusade gave people permission to pursue material goods, luxury, exercise, and time off from the grinding psychic oppression of the economic downturn. A third type of tract focused on work itself, and in particular “getting ahead.” Although the relief programs were generally popular throughout the 1930s, there was still significant embarrassment about reliance on the federal government to survive. Hence books that inspired people to set priorities, seek the right kind of job, and improve themselves were attractive to millions. Systematic programs and ideas could coach people up, and they would inevitably achieve more. All three types of books were popularly written and often undisciplined in focus, so the works slid in and out of genres, but this broad typology helps to illustrate the most notable general themes.6

Relaxing, Consuming, and Working An array of outstanding novels were published in the 1930s, and many made the best seller lists or were made into films in short order (e.g., John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath or Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind), but I focus here on nonfiction best sellers.7 There were biographies and histories, but multiple books were published in what is now a recognizable self-­help genre. Several works deserve particular focus: Life Begins at Forty (1932), You Must Relax (1934), Live Alone and Like It (1936), Wake Up and Live! (1936), Orchids on Your Budget (1937), and the most enduring title of all, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936). These books were all in the top-­ten best seller lists in their years of appearance as ascertained by Publisher’s Weekly, the trade magazine that ranked premier fiction and nonfiction titles starting in 1900. The Weekly’s method was to query booksellers in large American cities as to top-­selling books in their shops and then to aggregate the figures. Not a perfect method by any means, but better than most for studying the 1930s because the vast majority of books published were hardcover and sold at local bookstores (in later decades publishers began selling paperbacks, which were sold at book stands and drugstores). As Michael Korda, reflecting on forty-­three years as an editor at Simon & Shuster,

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notes, people look to best sellers to help them understand what is going on in a confusing world, hence the sudden appearance of Hitler’s Mein Kampf on the 1939 Publisher’s Weekly top-­ten list. Korda writes, “The bestseller list . . . presents us with a kind of corrective reality. It tells us what we’re actually reading (or, at least, what we’re actually buying) as opposed to what we think we ought to be reading, or would like other people to believe we’re buying. Like stepping on the scales, it tells us the truth, however unflattering.”8 There were two popular titles that best illuminate the first type of self-­help literature in the 1930s: stress control and relaxation. One was Edmund Jacobson’s You Must Relax: A Practical Method of Reducing the Strains of Modern Living.9 Not only was it a best seller in the 1930s, but it persisted in multiple editions into the 1970s and is even occasionally mentioned today in popular literature about relaxation techniques.10 Jacobson, a distinguished physician and professor at the University of Chicago, had published previously on his relaxation methods. These involved systematic tightening and loosening of muscles by the patient in order to reduce blood pressure, calm overactive nerves, lower tension, and ensure rest and sleep. He lays out a program for tensing and releasing body parts, from arms and legs to jaws and eyes. Jacobson, not a “quack” at all but a respected member of the medical profession, linked the importance of stress reduction to the larger socioeconomic pressures of the day. In the first chapter of his book he writes: Added to the stress of modern occupations are the financial urges from which few are free. Making enough money to satisfy ever increasing desires has come to be an almost constant stimulus to nervous overactivity upon the part of workingmen and women. During the years 1930 to 1933, loss of fortune has overtaken a great many families. . . . Continued unemployment has been thrust upon persons whose earnings are needed for support of themselves and loved ones. These factors have added so greatly to the tensions of present day life that neurologists, as well as lawyers, are often called upon to advise what had best be done to meet the changed situation.11

Jacobson’s general principles, if not his particular exercises and system, have carried on to the current day—­yoga, meditation, Pilates, biofeedback, and the like. His pioneering work was inspired by what he saw as the burdens of modern life—­the speed and pace of technology, the stresses of factory floor work, and the pressures felt by businessmen and housewives alike. He recognized that recreation, hobbies, and the distractions of popular culture were not salves in a tension-­filled world, and he encouraged readers to try and control their bodies in ways that would

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Figure 6.1. Early founder of the relaxation movement. Dr. Edmund Jacobson, Distinguished Professor at the University of Chicago, developed systematic techniques for relaxation and stress reduction, kicking off a field devoted to the topic. By using the brain to calm each part of the body, this early attempt at anxiety reduction was seen as a breakthrough fusing psychology and physiology. You Must Relax was a best-­selling nonfiction book in 1934. Courtesy of the University of Chicago Library.

stave off exhaustion, illness, and even death. The mind–­body connection was clear to Jacobson and his disciples, forerunners of so much that modern psychology takes for granted. With regard to popular culture and outreach to the average American in mass society, Jacobson was there early, with his serious yet easy-­to-­read and photograph-­filled guide to a better life in frightening, trying times.

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Another best seller of the period in the general category of stress reduction, but with a stronger focus on enjoyment, was Walter Pitkin’s successful Life Begins at Forty (1932). Pitkin, a journalist and professor at Columbia University, was a broad and prolific academic, publishing articles in philosophy journals as well as writing about American foreign policy, popular culture, and even children’s books. He clearly hit a chord with Life Begins at Forty, a book-­length discourse on how the world has changed in ways that make middle age far more attractive, productive, and pleasure filled than it had ever been. He made arguments about the wisdom born of aging, the way science has made life easier with less factory toil, and the importance and availability of adult education. Generally, he posited, expectations of older Americans were changing dramatically, and for the better. Although he came to quality-­of-­life issues and the importance of taking control from a different direction than Dr. Jacobson, he was equally hopeful—­indeed, ecstatic—­about the possibilities for growing old with panache as we are freed from the hardships of pre–­“machine age” times. In the book’s introduction, Pitkin stakes out his territory. He sets up a straw man, noting that many elites feel that middle-­class and working-­ class Americans are “constitutionally stupid” and too busy surviving depressing times to enjoy life at all. They are busy “grubbing away for bread and butter.” Pitkin rejects this hopelessness, urging people to take charge, gain skills, get more education, and generally reflect on all that is good in the world. He harkens back to the self-­made man of American lore, begging readers to climb out of depression and poverty and pull themselves up and out of despair. He notes that Americans have simply lost their imagination and will to live, before and after age forty. Teachers need to learn to use their hands, farm hands need to learn to drive, and chauffeurs need to learn to grow radishes. Everyone needs to be creative and learn new professions: The American pioneer was ever a flexible creature. His descendants have been losing the most precious train of their heritage. . . . Study our bread lines in this year of disaster and you will find proof of my words. . . . Left alone, [the mass of people] sit blankly on park benches, watching the swallows and traffic cops. They have lost that primitive consciousness of life. Life has, for them, ceased being a task-­of-­all-­trades. So, you see, they are nine-­tenths dead.12

Pitkin contends that one has more leisure hours in advanced age and therefore finally has the time to develop a lively mind; increasing one’s life span is very much about keeping up energy, activity, and curiosity. Unlike the more scientific Jacobson, Pitkin is intent on blaming the vic-

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tim: he makes many references to the challenges of the Depression and the anxieties of living in troubled times, but it’s the reader’s fault if he or she is wallowing in self-­pity. Look to the pioneers, pull yourself up: it’s weakness on your part if the Depression is getting you down. Pitkin manages to make the most American of self-­reliance arguments while in a framework of Marxian false consciousness (i.e., socioeconomic and political forces shouldn’t hold you back; if they do, you brought it on yourself). A confusing set of messages for sure, during one of the dreariest and most heartbreaking moments of the Depression. Pitkin’s was a call to defy the larger challenges of living in poverty and generally to cheer up. It was an oddly argued but wildly popular book. Clearly the combination of alternately scolding and inspiring—­all expressed in broad, accessible style—­had enough traction in popular culture to reach the top-­ten nonfiction sales list. Two other best sellers of the period, also making the top-­ten lists, encouraged people to grab on to life and climb out of the psychic dumps. Both were focused on living well and were written in quick succession by the same author, Marjorie Hillis: Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman (1936) and Orchids on Your Budget: Or Live Smartly on What You Have (1937). Hillis was an editor for Vogue who then became an advice columnist and Depression-­era precursor to Helen Gurley Brown—­the fun-­loving, sophisticated advocate for single, working white women. Very much in the spirit of the plucky, independent women in Hollywood films of the time, like Jean Arthur and Katharine Hepburn, Hillis was full of both realistic advice and aspirational rhetoric so she appealed to women across social strata, skewed to the white urban middle-­ class reader. Always working the line between the social and economic struggles of daily life and fantasy, Hillis could be inspirational but harsh as she tried to create a prototype for how a woman could live without men as the breadwinner and dominating force.13 The more interesting book of the two best sellers for our purposes here is Orchids on Your Budget, yet another take on the self-­reliance that Pitkin had emphasized in his own book about middle age.14 In Orchids, Hillis—­ writing primarily for women—­employs a more upbeat approach. Unlike the scolding and often harsh Pitkin, she wrote in an irreverent style, outlining how it is one can live a nearly luxurious life even in the depths of the Depression. As she notes in the opening chapter, everyone has to live on a budget, so feeling poor is a feeling, not an objective matter. Only “Mr. Ford and Mr. Mellon” and other “plutocrats” need not economize, while the rest of us must. The opening pages are jarring as she quickly dismisses the hardships and realities of the economy, arguing that no one gets everything they want and everyone is in a “perpetual state of affairs having

Figure 6.2. Bathing suit models at the World’s Fair, 1940. The spectacular nature of the fair’s buildings, monuments, and parks made it a prime spot for professional and amateur photography. There were seemingly endless locations to photograph fashion models of many sorts, and the fairgrounds were often associated with female glamor, sophistication, and the excitement of city living. The fair displayed women, of course, but was also designed for women. Marjorie Hillis wrote a women’s guide to visiting the fair alone, cementing the links between self-­help and tourism. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.

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nothing to do with conditions, the Administration (whether you love it or hate it), the price of free gold, or the chance of Inflation.” She writes: It’s just one of the Facts of Life that go on being true, good times or bad. Depression or Boom, six maids and a butler or no maid at all, practically everyone has less money than he used to have, or has acquired more expensive tastes. . . . The one thing you ought to be ashamed of is economizing grubbily. Nobody who matters cares a pouf what your income is these days, but people do care how you live and how you act about it. . . . Women who talk poverty and complain about the things they can’t have are invariably tiresome, and women who make something gay out of next to nothing are sure to be exciting.15

Hillis then presents nine chapters of practical advice—­how to dress, entertain, eat, and decorate the house—­when you have little money. Even if poor, one can be classy and proud with some imagination and a playful sensibility. It’s a fiery book written with panache, although it can read today as an insulting and flip diatribe. Nonetheless, it clearly captured the sensibilities of self-­reliance and self-­help of the 1930s or it certainly would not have been even a mediocre seller. After many chapters with examples of how to stretch a dollar without your poverty being noticed by friends, neighbors, and colleagues, we finally get to chapter 10 for what appears at first to be a reality check: “When You’re Really Broke.” Alas, after admitting there are many in destitute poverty, scraping to avoid starvation for self and family, Hillis turns right back to her chipper tone, this time sounding quite like Pitkin. Without calling out New Deal programs by name, she scolds people for reliance on government relief and encourages them to rely on friends (but always acting like you don’t like it, so they don’t resent you). You’d better have friends, or there is something clearly wrong with you. She notes that even the “saddest hardluck stories can be explained by the victim’s character.”16 She continues: “For it is our cold-­blooded opinion that this situation [being broke] is seldom altogether a matter of hard luck. Even the poor starving widow with several small children . . . passed up a few opportunities to build up a small savings account or made it difficult for her husband to save up for investments.”17 In her books Hillis craftily introduces performance: There are reality and fantasy both, but if you act the fantasy, it will be so. Surface matters in order to maintain dignity, so very important in hard times. Finally, a third strand of self-­help ideas is represented in two other top-­ ten best sellers of the 1930s, Dorothea Brande’s Wake Up and Live! (1936) and Dale Carnegie’s seemingly timeless How to Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936 and still in print today with a worldwide

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readership. Two different approaches to be sure, but both—­unlike the best sellers discussed above—­are more squarely about work and career. These were difficult topics in the 1930s given the high rate of unemployment, the stagnation of economic growth in nearly all sectors of the economy, and the general lack of opportunity and advancement. Most employed Americans considered themselves fortunate to have work at all, given what they saw in the press and in their own battered communities and cities. Yet the high unemployment did not somehow squash deeply held goals of advancement, wealth acquisition, and dreams of better and more interesting jobs, something both authors recognized. In Wake Up and Live!, Brande, a writer and editor at the American Review, elaborates her thesis that most people do not live up to their potential, regardless of their profession. People often have a “will to fail” and find it easiest to avoid even trying to fulfill their dreams. She uses herself as an example of someone who couldn’t seem to write, only to edit, until she—­by sheer will and self-­awareness—­pulled herself out of a depressed state and launched a highly successful writing career. Brande accentuates the general theme that one must “act as if it is impossible to fail.”18 Lack of success is largely a psychological problem, she states, and blaming the economic environment or other circumstances external to the mind is sheer folly. Examining the work of philosophers and psychologists, as well as Sigmund Freud (who was well known by the 1930s), Brande’s book is easy to read. Her goal is to inspire and provide concrete tools for modifying one’s behavior (all practical tasks): make lists, prioritize, send notes to yourself, take risks, ask questions of yourself and others, and be self-­aware at all times. Introspection and analysis of your own struggles will eliminate them for good and make you the most effective self you can be. Poverty was likely your fault, and summoning a supernatural will from deep inside will enable success. Historian Joanna Scutts describes how dependent Brande was on Nietzsche, contrasting the “will to live” with a dangerous “will to fail.” Unlike what we know about other popular self-­ help authors, Brande believed in fascism, although these tendencies are not mentioned outright in her books, which stay close to the American “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” lingo. As Scutts puts it, “According to 1930s self-­help guides, the costs of failing to conform to the self-­ improvement imperative were severe: they were an admission that you were one of society’s losers. The conviction that white American society was in the decline was common in the 1930s, a basic tenet of the overlapping work of fascists and eugenicists. Writers like Brande accordingly urged their readers to pursue success in order to separate themselves from the herd of nobodies.”19

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Although FDR spoke about the dangers of fearing “fear itself” in the early days of the Depression, he spoke too of the structural and economic forces that made good, honest men and women into victims of greedy capitalists and failing institutions. We see no such focus on structural or economic matters in Hillis, and certainly not in the books of Brande or Carnegie. Brande was particularly expert in locating the psychological zeitgeist of the day and explaining, in entertaining terms, how much of economic distress is quite simply one’s own fault. That millions of Americans could buy, read, and enjoy such a book is astounding to us here in 2021, but it made tremendous sense in the 1930s, a time when we were not quite prepared to give up the lore of the independent individual who didn’t (or shouldn’t) need an interventionist government or a handout. Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People underscores that failure is in one’s head and that success is possible with a positive mind-­set and some focused energy. Carnegie’s book endures because of its brief, punchy, and practical rules. You can “win people to your way of thinking” or make people like you, all of which lead to sales or persuasion in any line of work. Among his key principles were: let people save face; praise others wherever possible; criticize quietly and constructively; be open, sympathetic, and positive; show respect; avoid arguments; let others do most of the talking; and the much-­quoted advice, “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”20 Steven Recken argues that Carnegie and other authors in his vein focused on success but also, just as powerfully, on belonging and community. Carnegie knew that the Depression was isolating and that social networks were critical to emotional health and well-­being, hence his heavy emphasis on being liked. One of the key reasons the book was so compelling to Americans in the 1930s is that it wove together several ideas in seamless fashion: the routes to success, ways to avoid social isolation, and a humility reinvented for the twentieth century. At the time some modesty about one’s talents and success was prized, and so part of fitting in is to downplay talents and achievements: If people liked you because they need compliments and bucking up, they would in return help and value you. Focusing on yourself only was a recipe for disaster.21 How to Win Friends and Influence People was very much in keeping with the deeply American focus on industriousness. It was a religion of its own sort, with central texts and in-­person training, seminars, and other opportunities to gather and share Carnegie-­esque wisdom. I would argue that the book is one of the more representative illustrations of precisely how “the public” and “public opinion” emerged as fundamentally anti-­ intellectual, consumption-­oriented, and politically passive during the 1930s. Long debates about politics and policy—­something Tocqueville and

Figure 6.3. Dale Carnegie makes hand and footprints at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Carnegie was the most famous inspirational writer and speaker of his day, and How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold steadily around the world since it was first published in 1936. He hoped to inspire confidence in people, no matter their business or goals, to pursue their ambitions—­a particularly welcome message and set of directives at a time when many struggled to find jobs or advancement in a depressed economy. Photograph credit: Alamy.

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Bryce too thought was inimical to the American way of life—­had no place for the man in a hurry who was focused on success and community. The attraction of the Carnegie way was how it good-­naturedly dismissed the life of the mind without doing it directly. And who could argue with the basic premise, which shared much with organized religious practice: treat others with dignity, listen, and praise others more than oneself? The generalized focus on selflessness throughout is what rescued Carnegie’s approach from an openly bald pursuit of power and money. The latter was why the book took off as one of the premier self-­help books of all time, instructing readers on how to seek prosperity while not breaking from normative, small-­town-­like sociability. Why to seek prosperity was not addressed in any of the 1930s self-­help books, and why should it be, in a nation where the obvious value of material comforts and the pleasantness of getting along was paramount? If there was any question about how to approach substantive conversation about the tougher social and political issues of the day, one of Carnegie’s rules says it all: “The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.” Dale Carnegie’s enterprise has stood the test of time; his straightforward guidance lifts the spirits even now, despite its commonsensical simplicity and jauntily upbeat 1930s prose. Carnegie’s was an easy secular religion that fit with American practicality, valued so much more that spirituality or intellectualism. Hofstadter posited that the business orientation of Americans was so powerful that it stood in the way of almost everything else, glorifying the applied over the transcendent. He argued that in the United States, a nation founded in a land of resources to be mined, the emphasis would always be on the future and how to build a new world. Our tendency, in a place without the physical ruins of great civilizations all around, was always about shaking off the brutality, superstitions, and religiosity of the past as well as the art, poetry, and beauty of ancient worlds. Hofstadter cites leaders and writers of the nineteenth century but also those of the twentieth who warned that the past had very little to offer us, and that the central axis around which America revolved was the pragmatic and sensible, not the intellectual. As President Calvin Coolidge had famously noted, “The business of America is business.” Morality mattered, but in a utilitarian, simpleminded way; philosophy was not particularly useful; there was simply no place for it. As Hofstadter put it, in the early decades of the republic there was pointing to God and rhetoric about industriousness as a symbol of spiritual commitment and success. As the years wore on, devotion to a higher being became largely disconnected from the day-­to-­day innovation and economic development of society. The result of this evolution is that success in business was due to business-­mindedness—­intellectualism was simply no help in pursuing

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prosperity. He quotes railroad executive Charles ­Elliott Perkins, who wrote at the end of the nineteenth century: “Have not great merchants, great manufacturers, great inventors, done more for the world than preachers and philanthropists? . . . History and experience demonstrate that as wealth has accumulated and things have cheapened men have improved . . . in their habits of thought, their sympathy for others, their ideas of justice as well as mercy.”22 This was the Carnegie way, precisely but cleverly packaged into an accessible guidebook for the everyman or woman.

Self-­H elp Ideology and the Public What does all of this have to do with the creation of a public in the 1930s and the nature of public opinion as it came to the fore among pollsters, politicians, academics, and others? There are several insights about the sort of public that was formed in the 1930s as seen through self-­help tracts. For one, there is heavy emphasis in Hillis’s works on the material, something that dovetailed with a booming American focus on manufacturing, consumption, and advertising. It began in earnest in the 1920s, but even with the economic collapse of the Depression that kept so many from buying things, interest in consumer goods only intensified through the 1930s due to the efforts of advertisers and marketers on be­ half of industry. The attraction of household items for entertainment and ease of work, and the thrilling prospect of an automobile to explore the world beyond home, were the pillars upon which our material desires rested. And so it all comes together: the self-­help books inspired, and the advertisers told us what the prize of hard work looked like by way of new acquisitions. And to dream even bigger, there were the World’s Fairs showing us an even more stunning vision of a coming America, in model homes of the future full of gadgets or in the House of Gems. If you could find your footing and get your head in the right place, there was much to buy and enjoy. Indeed, the 1930s marked a tremendous acceleration of advertising of a particular sort as our premier social historian of corporate advertising, the late Roland Marchand, has detailed.23 In particular, Marchand argues, there were two “great parables” of advertising in the 1920s and 1930s, both of which appealed to materialism as a route to better living and comfort, even without wealth or privilege. A huge percentage of American consumer advertising was oriented around these particular persuasive appeals. One parable, which he calls the “parable of the first impression,” is that by buying a particular product (mouthwash, hair tonic, or razor blade) you could easily appear urbane and classy, presenting the kind of visage other people

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respond to and respect. The other was the “parable of the democracy of goods,” which promised magazine or newspaper readers that even with little money one could afford some good things in life, giving you a sort of quasi-­equality with the wealthy. A poor housewife, by using Ivory Soap, could have the soft hands of a wealthy woman, and Chase and Sanborn coffee was the coffee of choice for the rich but you too could afford it. These supposed truisms, and the millions of advertisements using them as underlying logic, were perfectly suited for a democracy in economic peril. They addressed the limited income people had while at the same time promising inexpensive comfort and an equity with richer Americans. This erasure of class lines common in advertising was just as common in the self-­help books that were aimed at all Americans. There was an assumption, a delusion, that Americans needed help regardless of their income or state of mind. Hillis and Brande thought everyone, no matter their means, could do better socially and with regard to career success, hence Carnegie designed his tools for anyone from top management to the local shoe salesman. This way of speaking to all Americans, appealing to the tug of dissatisfaction no matter their status, had the effect of making the public a public—­more cohesive and homogenous than diverse. In the same way that Roosevelt designed and spoke to an imagined, unified public, self-­help writers did the same along with advertisers, marketers, pollsters, and the creators of the world’s fairs. The self-­help books are interesting in their focus on psychology, a field of great interest given the celebrity status and impact of Sigmund Freud in the early decades of the twentieth century. Interest in Freud was widespread, and the popularity of his basic ideas seeped into books, magazines, and films because the “subconscious” was such a rich idea, with such tremendous implications and applications. There were other types of psychological paradigms as well, exemplified by Dr. Jacobson’s mindfulness. What this blooming popular interest in psychology brought, especially as manifest in the self-­help movement, was the notion of a public “mood.” A feeling wasn’t simply something held by an individual: those individual psychologies could add up to a public psychology. If public opinion was an aggregation of individual opinions, perhaps pollsters and authors (albeit less systematically) were aggregating mood and feeling as well as opinions. The integration of the psychological would become increasingly sophisticated in opinion research over the decades to come, but its birth was in the 1930s as intellectuals, political leaders, and so many others began to make the connection: how people, in the aggregate, viewed the world was twofold—­feeling and opinion. The pollsters asked how people felt, something not previously explored, through mass aggregation of people across the nation: What did we think about Jews, immigrants, or

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Blacks? But also, how did we feel? Were we afraid of further economic collapse? And did we gain psychic comfort from our president? As I write in early 2021, it is impossible to reread the self-­help books of the 1930s without thinking of an outstanding characteristic of so many of the tracts: the fight against despair but also against loneliness and social isolation. In the 1930s, the worry seemed to be that lack of personal success and absence of a gratifying social network might turn one to depression, or even suicide. But today we have new concerns, born of horrendous acts of domestic terrorism, and growing social science evidence demonstrating that isolation can lead to crime, cults, and radicalization. The self-­help literature is far more extensive and varied today than in the past, with so much of it available for free on the internet. But terrorists recruiting the lonely—­people seeking community without success—­have been aided by that same internet. The conundrum persists: why our society, so full of self-­improvement and self-­care information, still spawns so much social isolation and the extreme results from it.24

* That a particular type of self-­help book (and self-­help movement, in the case of Dale Carnegie’s enduring impact), focused on the traditions of individual agency, practicality, and luxury on a tight budget, emerged with force in the midst of the Great Depression is no surprise at all in the context of deprivation and struggle. It was a set of arguments and useful tools that was desperately needed—­ways to think about one’s own agency at a time when the promise of even modest success felt remote at best and impossible at worst. If we were to step back to view these tracts in much broader, grander terms, it was all an accessible counterdiscourse to socialism, communism, fascism, and other possible threats to democracy. In the same way that Roosevelt developed his own vehement political argument against revolution, elaborating how deeply American the New Deal was, the self-­help authors too were intent on maintaining the everyday social, political, and financial status quo. Urgent action of any sort (meetings, social organizing, joining a revolutionary movement, or thinking about the overthrow of government) could not be more absurd in light of what one could do for oneself. The “American Way,” so hotly debated in the 1930s, was, among other things, the very reason to go ahead and take charge of one’s destiny. Individual agency had in fact always been our path, and it became clearer than ever in the fluidity and the great changes of the 1930s. The Depression was a test, the self-­help movement underscored; but an American public, a cohesive body with shared values of hard work, consumerism,

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and practicality, could weather it with ease, humor, determination, and a breezy, confident spirit. There was no need for philosophy, political self-­ reflection, or new political movements. The trauma would pass because we are a public with consensus about what matters for a good life, and individuals inspired and directed by people like Carnegie, not by parties or organizations, would always win the day.

7 * Public Opinion and Its Problems S o m e Wa y s F o r w a r d

The central goal of this book was to conduct an archeological dig into the meaning of “public opinion” in the 1930s. How did various parties with a great interest in understanding and persuading the people—­so they could influence political views, sell consumer goods, educate radio listeners, and even change the course of democracy—­think about the public, its sentiments, and how it might be inspired or manipulated? Put another way, there were multiple narratives about what the public actually was in the 1930s and how it was characterized. Was it volatile or stable? Powerful or weak? These were key questions at the time because the public suffered so much collectively as a result of the tremendous economic downturn. It seemed vitally important that leaders, writers, journalists, artists, clergy, and so many others map out how the public could endure the Depression, prepare for greater American leadership in a dangerous world, and cope with changes in the technology that might threaten their jobs. On a cultural level, radio as a medium was wreaking havoc with communications and altering the fundamental nature of mass society. The decade of the 1930s was a period when there was an obsession in elite circles about what it meant to be American. Educators and writers tried to define an “American Way” that might reflect the values of all—­ hard work, optimism, entrepreneurial spirit, freedom, and the like. But this was highly contested territory given the resistance to immigrants and the abundance of racism and antisemitism across the land. I hope I have shown how the wildly different major players on the public stage sought to define who the public was, how they acted, and why they did what they did. “Mass society,” as it was called by American social scientists, was here to stay now that radio could draw us together.1 But for those outside of academe, that wasn’t the right label for a democracy; it sounded like socialism or fascism, a worrisome place where people were faceless and not individuals. We, in contrast to other subdued populations, were and are an American public, not a mass (the latter reserved for the old country) with their traditions of kings, dictators and demagogues.

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The previous chapters explored how some of the obvious agents in defining the public and the public sentiment tried to build them in ways that would be politically useful (President Roosevelt) or lucrative (George Gallup). But another goal was to highlight some less obvious but equally important actors and forces in popular culture that were (purposely or not) constructing a public and shaping its sentiments. The intercultural education movement’s use of radio was a very interesting and important force, as were the World’s Fairs of the 1930s, which highlighted for tens of millions (attendees or not) exactly how a public would and should be defined by technology and consumerism. And then came an unfortunate shift in the few short years between the 1933–­1934 Chicago World’s Fair and the New York World’s Fair in 1939–­1940: by 1939, powerful city leaders and manufacturers agreed that basic sciences should no longer be a focus. The public envisioned in New York need not be drawn to science but to the application of scientific principles and invention to creating better consumer goods—­appliances, cars, and even homes. The public was not, organizers and companies assumed, particularly interested in the intellectual forces guiding technology, but average people were highly attuned to how technology could help them directly. Like the previous fairs and the ones to follow, entertainment of visitors was of utmost import. A glib but appropriate label for the 1939 fair was “bread and circuses”—­sustaining life in the easiest manner possible and making it fun. Intellectualism, science, political engagement, equality, and debate were all washed over by spectacular exhibits of a technocratic but superficially imagined democracy of the future. Democracy, as constructed by the fair organizers and so many industrial giants, was really just an assumption, not a meaningful concept to be explicated. Of course, the loftier goals and practices of democracy could not be detected on the fairgrounds or within major exhibitions. Equality and respect were missing as African Americans, Native Americans, and countless immigrant groups were largely ignored except as entertainment. They were workers or simply exhibitions themselves, dancing, singing, and delighting audiences daily. Finally, the brief foray into the self-­help movement in chapter 6 is revealing as well. So many of the notions still with us today, about taking control of one’s work and health, took off with gusto in the 1930s. People bought best sellers by compelling figures like Dale Carnegie and Marjorie Hillis, who provided detailed guidance for living and working. Were these authors somehow intent on washing over the larger economic and social causes of the Depression and the generalized struggle people faced? Absolutely, but their sheer optimism and empowerment talk was contagious and attractive as people fought hard times. One growing trend

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among the ones mentioned previously was weight loss, which must be the ultimate form of improvement through personal agency. Control of the body, primarily of women’s bodies, was at least one thing you could do without government help and while living in or near poverty. As Marisa Meltzer notes, there was an increasingly popular weight-­loss movement in the early twentieth century, with fad diets in the 1920s and increasing diet consciousness as the decades passed: amphetamines became a common weight-­loss drug, and near-­starvation, low-­calorie diets flourished in magazines for women.2 It is always vital to look for the unmentioned in popular culture, and self-­help literature actively avoided pursuit of social goals in order to focus on individuals only. There was no self-­help movement or set of national best sellers keyed to fighting racism in one’s community or instructing people how to engage in introspection about nonwhite “others” among them. This is why the Americans All—­Immigrants All broadcasts were so unusual; educators knew that self-­reflection about race and diversity would not rise through publishing houses trying to sell books. Teachers and intellectuals would have to fight the battle against racism, and in the broadcasts we can see how they were trying to characterize nondiscrimination as good for democracy but also good for the individual; the goal was to learn from and get along with others.

Public Opinion Then and Now Our history is distorted through the lens of today, and that is inevitable given the complexity of understanding any event or era. Some contemporary governments make law, and often control what is published in textbooks, to shape history in ways that they believe serve the present. Other national regimes might make sincere attempts to wrench the telling of history back closer to difficult empirical findings ignored by their predecessors. In general, though, history is elastic, which of course is what gives it its power. One of the most difficult things about studying the 1930s, and all other periods before it, is that its players are long gone. We sift through all we can find and do the best we can, relying on so many other scholars who have tackled the subject before we came along. Among the particular difficulties of studying public opinion and publics is of course that these concepts keep changing, just as the world keeps changing. Intellectual history and social history are evolving at the same time, interconnected at moments but often distant from each other. As noted early in this book, concepts are “frozen conflicts.” The conflicts—­among institutions, people, nations—­are fluid, making transhistorical meaning of terms impossible.

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Phrases like “public opinion” and concepts like “the public” are difficult enough to define at a moment in time, so locating a standing definition across centuries or decades will never be a productive task. That said, there are key elements, dynamics, and tendencies embedded in concepts like “public opinion,” and in the cases of the 1930s and the 2020s we find profoundly important parallels. Some of the conflicts of the past are indeed frozen into today’s thinking. Some continuities are so great in fact that we can say with confidence that the past provides guidance, understanding, and, most important, warnings. And the latter is perhaps the most vital: history hands us an abundance of red flags. For example, one of our premier historians, Timothy Snyder, has given Americans of our time a master class in how to look for tyranny and authoritarianism in 2021, based on his lifetime of archival work on Europe in the war-­torn twentieth century.3 It is not as difficult as it might seem to illuminate the characters and events of this book and make them speak to our contemporary political culture. They do, and the special relationship between a president and a public is almost a mandatory starting point. In the 1930s we see Franklin Roosevelt, a president like no other, taking powerful hold of both radio and the press for his own purposes. Through these channels he painted a picture of an American public that was already unified, thoughtful, and educable. His rhetoric and approach set the table for many presidents to follow, who have generally called for unity. It is one of the many idiosyncratic things about President Trump, who did not see the public as unified at all. Far from it, he reinforced divisions, lauding and speaking in particular to his political “base.” It was unthinkable for a president to speak this way in the 1930s, and until Trump’s presidency, in fact, but I would argue that future presidents will likely go back to the general communicative style of FDR and orient themselves around the notion of a unified public and public opinion. Indeed, President Biden centered his campaign and his inaugural speech around the notion of a unified public, uttering the word eight times in a brief speech, and with great emphasis.4 One of the fascinating talents of FDR was the way he scolded (constantly) journalists in private for their negativity about his decisions but limited this talk greatly in public. This is again in high contrast to President Trump, who engaged in open warfare with the press (referring to them as “the enemy of the people”) and spoke to a divided America just as loudly about an allegedly dishonest press corps. If we were to think of President Trump as a “public opinion theorist,” something I hesitate to do in these very early months of reflection and recovery from a chaotic period, we would need to address the way he openly conflated “fake news” coverage with the way it affects public opinion about him. Trump’s

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theory is an egomaniacal one, with policy always taking a far backseat to the public’s love (or distaste) of him. Trump’s envisioned public is obviously highly manipulable, so much so that he kept up a constant argument with media coverage about the public in his Twitter feed. Regardless of his private views and frustrations about public opinion, FDR prioritized respect for the popular sentiment and the folks who expressed it. Trump, in one of so many contrasts, thought people to be unthinking unless they swore perfect allegiance to him and all of his ideas. Trump found it un-­ American to disagree with him, so in his paradigm, Americanism is conflated with fealty to the president. It is almost as if Trump’s lesson from FDR, if he did in fact devote thought to it, is that Roosevelt’s influence lay in his charisma and popularity only. Historians know, of course, that FDR’s journey to the office and his general success in it was one paved by extraordinary thought, planning, strategy, religion, collaboration, the articulation of American values, as well as a struggle for moral clarity. Roosevelt worked to shape opinion while Gallup, Roper, and others forged their own way and created a lasting industry here and abroad. Yet opinion polling as a practice took a harsh beating in the aftermath of both the 2016 and 2020 American presidential elections.5 Predictions for outcomes in many states were wrong, and the reasons for it are clear in some cases, murky in many others. Some ethnic groups voted “as expected” in their alleged (by pundits) “best interests.” But others defied the numbers and predictive logic. In addition, of course, there were all the categories beyond ethnicity that might be analyzed: how suburban women voted, how Obama voters voted, rural poor versus urban poor voter differences, and so forth. One of the most critical areas of study into the future, given the authoritarian language and instincts of President Trump, is the psychological makeup of the polled electorate: Are some individuals hardwired to be drawn to “strongmen” while others are prone to resistance and chronic skepticism of leaders?6 The key lesson from my perspective is that culturally sophisticated queries and categories are vital to polling. There is no question that most die-­ hard Republicans of high income will support Republican candidates and policies, for example. But there is far more complexity and fluidity in public opinion. Indeed, there always has been. What is interesting is how, back in the 1930s, ­Gallup in particular had little problem with the notion of slicing and dicing the electorate into categories, washing over complexity, and assuming that all ­respondents saw the same America. While his commercial success was undeniable, perhaps the early pollsters’ most extravagantly misguided approach was to assume that all of their questions would be read the same way, that categories were real and not constructed

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through retrospective analysis, and that the relationship between the pollster and the polled was not a socially constricted one. Cooperating with pollsters was voluntary in the 1930s, as it is today, but after a member of the public agrees to participate, the pollster has the authority to shape the world through the questions asked. Instead of recognizing this, and grappling with such methodological conundrums, the early pollsters bulldozed right over them, setting the course of the future of the industry. There are other ways to know public opinion, as is evident in this book and in other methods used today (e.g., focus groups, content analyses of social media, or stock market analysis). But the basic contours of polling as a crude, authoritarian, and extraordinarily rigid form of public opinion discernment was established very powerfully in the 1930s. Whether today’s commercial and political pollsters can learn from more sophisticated (albeit resource poor) academic survey experimentation or from the basic tenets of the field of sociology remains to be seen. The sheer diversity of Americans in the 1930s was something the pollsters couldn’t quite work into their methodological approach, and they didn’t really try. After all, they had clients to please and elections to predict. They were in a hurry. Pollsters’ success and their entire paradigm was based on a thing called “public opinion” actually existing, the aggregation of views of some concrete “public.” Polling assumed not unity, but cohesion and shared perspective. People could disagree, but they saw the same world, worked in the same world, and took in queries the same way. By contrast, Americans All—­Immigrants All saw the diversity of the public on a grand scale. Rachel Davis DuBois, John Studebaker, and the other heroes of this episode in broadcast history were progressives, intent on honoring racial and ethnic diversity and bent on inclusion of some sort. They imaged both of these goals differently than we would today, obviously, but the fundamental intent was to do quite the opposite of Gallup: to complexify the makeup of an American public, not to treat it as a monolith. The progressives behind the radio project knew that the varied groups of immigrants, Jews, and African Americans saw the world differently. But it was too difficult in these early times to map that out in ways that were possible decades later. The best they could do, and it is indeed heroic and admirable for its time, was to emphasize the diversity itself and to value it, simply and straightforwardly. It was indeed a tremendous advance in “intercultural education” and had many impacts on both audiences and on the future of broadcasting. Nonetheless, it stopped short of the more dangerous and important territory, namely the questions: What does all this laudable diversity mean for the polity? For our institutions and our laws? Even more trailblazing and difficult: Could all

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of these people (or their children) get to voting booths freely? Were they welcome as citizens in the making, or were they just supposed to be happy they made it to America? Struggles over immigration and citizenship remain. In many ways we have advanced gloriously in how we value newcomers, with the talents, customs, cultures, ideas, and challenges they bring. But in many other ways, the fear of immigrants is even more fierce as anti-­immigrant rhetoric and sentiment was bolstered so dramatically with the rise of Donald Trump. As has been noted so many times since 2015, the Trump candidacy began with a verbal assault on Mexican immigrants and continued with vigor until his defeat in 2020. Building a wall on the Mexican-­ American border to prevent immigration, banning immigrants from certain majority-­Muslim countries, and a generalized diminution of immigrants’ desperation and humanity were perhaps Trump’s most effective strategic tactics. Rachel DuBois had argued that the Americans All broadcasts needed more content on discrimination (versus celebration) toward immigrants, but celebration won out. And we cope with this balance today, from the most critical matters to the lesser ones. Should there be a path to citizenship and a concerted fight against prejudice for immigrants, or should they just be grateful to get by? Do we need to help them achieve access to medical care to stay well? Can we enjoy their food, dance to their music, and hire them to do our work but still not see them as part of the American “public”? Americans All had no answer, and we are far from consensus today. President Trump, on the other hand, had answers. And those answers will not disappear with his leaving public office: he unearthed and reinforced fear and skepticism of immigrants. Whether President Biden can make change, with or without Congress, remains an open question in the summer of 2021. Throughout the previous chapters, the questions of race hatred, racial violence, and racial equity have arisen in such different ways. In 1939 a pollster asked thousands of respondents whether any Blacks were “as intelligent as the average white man,” whether they should be deported, and whether they should be forced by law to live in particular neighborhoods. And the bizarre map accompanying Americans All kept Blacks firmly in the South, lauding their lively music and their economic importance in agricultural production. Whether in the 1930s or during the Second World War, most Americans could avoid the profound questions related to the inclusion of Blacks in the public. These were the days before the civil rights movement and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when matters of race hatred and discrimination became part of the national conversation for the long term. Our conversation continued with tremendous emotion and astounding vigor in 2020 with the murder of George Floyd, the in-

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creasing strength of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the national outcry over matters of prejudice far beyond racist police brutality. But it is in the 1930s that we see foreshadowing of the fundamental question of our time: How is it that Americans can finally create the democracy we claim we have, by treating African Americans and people of color as equal and integral members of an American public? Even in the arena of entertainment the 1930s speak to us, politically and culturally. The New York World’s Fair of 1939 is a quite incredible “text” about the public for us to read here in 2021. On those fairgrounds, awe of American manufacturing prowess; the lures and, indeed, the centrality of consumerism to our national character; and the prioritizing of entertainment over science were brought together in spectacular fashion. Science was lauded for how it would bring us health and comfort, and the beauty and struggle of basic science took a backseat to application and engineering. Fairgoers and the millions who read about the fair learned much, no doubt. But learning was to be fun, not difficult. There were answers to our problems, a clear technocratic path to strong democracy ahead, and of course plenty of conviviality and thrills. The 1939 fair, and the others of the period, were about entertainment and infotainment, that particularly American blend of fun and data. Anti-­ intellectualism could be found in abundance; there was little room for skepticism about corporate America, or about the nature of technological advancement. “Others” were exhibits, and it was a joy to be able to see Native Americans in their “habitat” or to see African Americans dance. You came to a fair to visit these things, not to accept them or to invite them into your community. As I mentioned previously, the fairs are interesting in that the 1930s are among the last grandly expansive (and expensive) gasps of spatially constricted infotainment. In our day we don’t typically go places to visit other cultures or to dream about the future. There are concerts and amusement parks, sports venues, tourism (for those who can afford it), and museums in all parts of the nation. Our struggles now, however, are really within the media ecosystem, and social media in particular. Ideally a citizen roams the internet broadly, reading many opinions, learning about people different than themselves, and so forth. But this is far from the reality we recognize daily, where people of the same sort tend to interact with each other inside of social media bubbles they have chosen. It is here that truth is pursued or denied and where anti-­intellectualism flourishes. Fundamentally, the planners of the 1939 World’s Fair understood that pleasure was what would attract people and generate profit. If nothing else, chapter 4 underscores the vital importance of play as

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what we gravitate toward and what in many ways matters most in our public lives. Of course, Americans lead lives dominated by struggles over money, work, health, raising children, and the like. But when we can get away from hardship, we want to be entertained and we want to laugh, just as we did in the 1930s. Politicians know this, hence their presence campaigning at county fairs, their willingness to take “selfies” with anyone, their entertaining advertisements, humorous tweeting and memes, and other social media antics. But until President Trump, most candidate behavior and rhetoric, as well as presidential behavior and rhetoric, was serious and sober. Trump brought humor, nicknames, insults, and excitement to his followers, something we all saw vividly throughout his campaigns and his administration. Yet one of the most important functions of his raucous rallies and constant Twitter discourse was to bring pleasure. I find this to be among the most important and overlooked Trump strategies to gain loyalty and attention: his speeches, displays, and gatherings were a blast for his supporters. As one of my students, who had been to a major Trump rally, noted, it was like the best and wildest rock concert or sporting event he’d ever attended. The feeling of participants was elation, and indeed love for a charismatic leader. He spoke to issues, he taught them how to see the world, and he brought gaiety and joy. This is still difficult for many commentators, journalists, academics, and citizens to comprehend, but it something that mattered and will be of intense study over the coming years. It will be difficult to imitate, but future politicians will no doubt try. A last note before we pull back further to assess public opinion in contemporary American democracy, a note that also concerns the World’s Fairs and corporate behavior of the 1930s. It was in the 1930s that American industry got its footing, took public relations and consumer study seriously, and in general looked to engage, entertain, and indeed build a public they could sell to. Our top American industry titans today are so-­called Big Tech, and they work in the same manner as their industry titan predecessors. Their products, from Amazon to Facebook, bring us comfort and sociability. They make us happy and satisfied, and the companies manage their images rigorously and constantly. Technology companies need not display their wares at a fair, but they do need to justify their place in a democratic nation. The car companies and manufacturers of 1939 had it easy, with little questioning by leaders or citizens. Big Tech was given a pass for years as well, seen as inherently American in their entrepreneurial spirit and innovation. But now that the policies of these technology companies have made it easier for foreign and domestic enemies to attack democracy, they will have far more to answer for than American industry ever has.

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Democracy and Quality Public Opinion A sizable number of recent scholarly books documenting American democracy’s flaws end with a whimper, leaving most of us much smarter but also pretty depressed and debilitated. The challenges are vast and ­diverse, so it’s nearly impossible for social scientists to provide tightly focused plans that might address the broad, grave questions raised. Among these questions is of course the challenge of representation itself. In fact, these days most discussion about what the public is, and what public opinion is, is rooted in a central question: Why is the vox populi so volatile and resistant to fact in democracy as practiced in the United States? Structural change is needed, in law and even in the Constitution, although academics lack the ability and authority to pass legislation or lobby Congress. As a result, conclusions of our books tend to point to certain directions and hope for the best; we stick to middle-­range theory and not praxis. It is a frustrating place to be, poised at that gulf between the analysis of problems and actually solving them. The philosopher Hannah Arendt elaborated on this chasm in the 1950s as she reflected on the brutality of war and the nature of collective action, including the destruction of the European Jews. She distinguished between thinking about the world and working in it. The vita contemplativa was set in opposition to the vita activa, flip sides of the human condition. Are they related, and can people in any era connect the two to solve the political conundrums of their time?7 Some thinkers on democracy speak directly to the particular, chronic difficulties related to public opinion that I have discussed throughout this book. Even if we worked on structural problems of democratic representation, we still have essential flaws in public opinion: lack of citizens’ competence to opine on policy matters, the public’s irrational fears of immigrants, racial intolerance, anti-­intellectualism, distraction, overly strong interest in consumption, and malleability of opinion in the face of intense presidential or corporate persuasion. These are all long-­running characteristics of American democracy with multiple causes, so even the most sophisticated among us can become superficial and overly confident when it comes to somehow “bettering” the public sphere. A fine example of a well-­meaning article along these lines—­one that asked scholars, journalists, activists, and even artists and celebrities for “fixes” to democracy—­was published by the Washington Post in 2017, in the wake of a new Trump presidency.8 It includes the sort of crude, overly hopeful set of remedies to democracy’s woes that we have become accustomed to seeing these days. Among the thirty-­eight ways to “fix” democracy in that piece are everything from requiring people to vote and

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taking a month away from social media to new constitutional amendments. A provocative aggregation of ideas, for certain; we need to dream. What are we trying to fix, exactly? Many writers home in on the central problems, now very obvious: partisan polarization, incivility, lack of basic political knowledge, the effects of cable news “outrage” punditry, growing indifference to facts, low voter turnout of certain groups, and the perverse operational failure of vital institutions (e.g., the US Senate). Solutions are not nearly as numerous as the problems, and it can all be overwhelming. With regard to lack of representation of so many citizens and legislative gridlock, for example, the fixes that might work will be exceedingly difficult to turn into law due to lack of legislative support and/ or Supreme Court rejection. These proposals most often include shifting to proportional representation in the Senate, as opposed to each state having two senators, and halting the gerrymandering of legislative districts for congressional elections. Elimination of the filibuster rule—­a rule that does not appear in the Constitution—­could be changed by US senators themselves and would enable legislation to pass with simple majorities instead of supermajorities, thereby making the body productive again. Attention to democracy’s ills and the cures for those ills have accelerated, driven in large part by the stunning victory of Donald Trump and his approach to rhetoric and governance. The populism he cultivated during the 2016 presidential campaign and continues to cultivate, even following his tenure in the White House, owe much to the late nineteenth-­ century People’s Party and Huey Long in the early 1930s. Yet as always happens with every new wave of populism, Trump reinvented anti-­elite sensibility in his own fashion. His novel form of populism pleases and motivates tens of millions, and the sheer number of followers have made “broken democracy” an obsession among detractors and supporters. For the first time in my own decades-­long career in education, students ask often whether capitalism is superior to socialism (or even communism) or whether democracy is dying, how fast, and if it matters. Perhaps the current so-­called constitutional crisis many of us believe we are now in was inevitable, given political polarization and its dangers. Maybe Trump just lit a match, as any shrewd politician with fearless self-­righteousness and megalomania could. Regardless, the repair or rejection of democracy as a system and culture are the issues of our time. Nearly all of the questions have been asked before, quite vociferously in the 1930s, and we try to answer them in our own unique moment. In terms of improving public discourse and, specifically, the civility that makes it possible, proposed fixes tend to rely on the civic-­mindedness of media corporations, editors, and journalists as well as congressional pressure and legislation. For example, many have noted that social media

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platforms like Facebook have been fueling polarization, incivility, and the proliferation of false claims, rumors, conspiracy theories, and personal threats. Social media companies could be regulated, and dramatically, but there is little sentiment for bold movement in this direction because encroachment on free speech is a real danger. This particular conundrum is among the toughest, and even the most ferocious advocates of regulation are nervous about antidemocratic forms of censorship that might result from their efforts. At this writing there is renewed interest in ­regulation of social media platforms due to the January 6 rally and storming of the US Capitol. Much planning before January 6—­to do harm to legislators, and indeed to take control of both houses of Congress—­was executed through internet conversations among right-­wing extremists. Political scientists look to find consensus about threats to democratic practice (not so hard) and solutions that might actually get enacted (exceedingly hard). I leave to others how we might approach the challenging work of structural reform, such as Senate recomposition, and instead outline specific solutions based on previous chapters. What are some paths forward to address the central difficulties unearthed in this book about public opinion, its source (in the people), its quality, and its communication? In particular I focus on citizen lack of knowledge, passivity, and disinterest in politics; lack of corporate responsibility in public discourse; weaknesses in journalism; and the deficits in K–­12 and higher-­education curricula. These matters can be taken up by educators at all levels, and they couldn’t be more important in our moment. It is the kind of work that Rachel DuBois, John Studebaker, and the other tenacious progressive educators pursued as they produced Americans All—­Immigrants All on the basis of far less political experience than we now have. They surely did their part in the 1930s and with a great deal of courage: DuBois was applauded and disdained, always scrambling for funding, and it’s a wonder Studebaker survived in Washington at all given the skepticism of many congressmen and others toward progressive education by broadcast. Even if not entirely successful on all fronts, educators of their ilk made some major impacts as they worked to reduce discrimination, dispel ethnic stereotypes, and boost tolerance across the nation, reaching millions over an intense seven-­month period starting in late 1938. Both DuBois and Studebaker were inspired by the philosopher-­educator John Dewey, and the title of this chapter is an homage to his landmark 1927 book The Public and Its Problems. For Dewey, the “public” in “public opinion” is missing if the process of forming opinions—­how people come to them and how they evolve—­isn’t out in the open and transparent. Public opinion could not live in peoples’ heads, to be pried out eventually through survey questions. As Dewey put it, if we are to become a

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“Great Community” we need to use technology and institutions (such as schools and communication media) to create a public actually worthy of democracy—­a thoughtful public opinion. We need places to share and to converse; location is essential. He wrote: “[Democracy] will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication.”9 No wonder that anti-­intellectualism, dangerous populism, racism, and passivity reigned in the 1930s and do again now: The ways people got to these natural comfort zones was through a lack of discussion, of questioning, and of civilized, substantive debate. I am not arguing, nor would Dewey, that transparent democratic discussion could have easily overcome racism, the deep passivity of most citizens, or the delusions promoted by much self-­help literature of the 1930s. But if provocative programs that spurred local discussion (such as Americans All—­Immigrants All) had flourished, progress might have been immense and ongoing. Educators are dominant among three nonelected types of public figures who can greatly improve the communication of public opinion, conceptions of the public, and its self-­conceptions. And so I organize a discussion of challenges and remedies around teachers and two other agents: journalists and corporate leaders. These were three of the major players who shaped ideas about the public and its sentiments in the 1930s, and they can work to our benefit today as we try to construct a public worthy of the most optimistic democratic theory. Educators matter immensely still, of course, as do the other forces discussed: the journalistic (newspaper) community that popularized the new opinion poll and the industry executives who invested millions to shape a consuming public through World’s Fairs, advertising, and marketing.

The Role of Education, Realistically These days there are cries for better civics education from nearly all quarters because no matter one’s ideology, serious polarization and general disenchantment with politics hurts us all. Unlike most teachers in K–­12, many (though certainly not all) college faculty often do have the time and the job security that would enable mass experimentation to expand citizen participation and instill higher levels of both curiosity and learning. Instead of pursuing these projects, some of our best thinkers on political participation keep calling for more and better “liberal arts education.” Well, of course—­that’s an easy thing to call for. But it is a way we avoid facing the real conundrums of public opinion, not to mention enormously tiresome. For example, pointing at STEM education as a cruel villain crushing the liberal arts is a straw man, creating a false choice. Typically

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both STEM and the liberal arts are badly underfunded at all but the most elite colleges and universities, and they both matter. We need to spend less time repeating obvious mantras about the importance of liberal arts and get far more specific about how we educate students for a lifetime of both contemplation and the world-­making Arendt emphasized.10 There are multiple ways of thinking about civic education in democracies within school settings but also in community programs, town meetings, religious congregations, museums, nonprofit organizations formed around local problems (e.g., environmental groups or land trusts), and other avenues for public discussion or action. This kind of engagement with other adults has long been a vital source for civic education and is not an American invention: gathering for politics, religion, or artistic performance was seen by the ancient Greeks as vital to life in democracies, and the Enlightenment further developed the roles of conversation and discussion as ways to form good citizens. Continued learning and interaction mattered, even if it happened for only a narrow segment of the white male population. Ongoing education was indeed a grand topic of the Enlightenment, particularly in Rousseau’s work on education, long before Tocqueville described the unique charms of civil society in nineteenth-­ century America. Instead of adult civic education, my focus is on the other type of civic education—­the sort tied to classrooms. In that context, most often we bemoan the lack of required civics courses on basic American government—­the roles of the three branches of government, landmark Supreme Court cases, how ideas become bills and then laws, voting rules and procedures, and the like. We know what this should look like in K–­12 classrooms and certainly at the college level, where any student could take introductory courses on government if faculties require it. Civics education of that conventional type is fairly easily fixed by state legislators, state education boards, and school districts and administrators, if they have the resources and will to do better. It takes commitment, but it doesn’t take much imagination because outstanding textbooks, as well as free resources and online lesson plans, abound for all grade levels.11 Here I concentrate on a much more challenging type of civic education: how we teach young people to argue, engage, and keep learning on their own for a lifetime in ways they find gratifying. How can we instill in students—­who will compose the voting, taxpaying public of the future—­an interest in democratic practice itself? Put another way, how do we create a sense that their role in democracy matters enough that they need to engage? Even if a student understands the operations of government, our roles, and our rights, it doesn’t go very far in teaching good citizenship or how to be an active member of the public. Civics as

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taught through even the best textbooks certainly doesn’t create the sort of citizen that Gallup and the early pollsters (optimistically) assumed: the ideal American ready to opine on what a pollster asks, without warning or study. To gain the sort of competence and knowledge one needs to answer polls properly and with thoughtfulness, remembering that there are nine justices on the Supreme Court or the content of Marbury vs. Madison doesn’t really help. And if we expect more of citizens than answering pollsters, and do what we really hope for—­voting, taking in the news, thinking about their views, participating in challenging conversation with others, joining political organizations and seeing oneself as the font of self-­rule—­we will need reimagined civic education. Political theorists Jack Crittenden and Peter Levine helpfully divide the various types of civic education in schools into five categories.12 There are “service-­learning” programs typically offered in high schools and colleges, where students are sent out into communities to tutor younger children, clean up the environment, help build homes in impoverished areas, and participate in other projects that help them connect what they learn in school to the daily lives of people around them. Closely related is what Crittenden and Levine call “action civics,” which also sends students out into the community, but for more expressly political and partisan action—­running petition drives, speaking up at town meetings, participating in voter registration drives, and even working for political campaigns. Yet even more intense, and building on neo-­Marxian thought, is “liberation pedagogy,” a dialogue and action approach to civics introduced by Paulo Freire and centered around decolonialization and freedom of the oppressed, such as Indigenous peoples.13 The two remaining categories are the ones I work with here. One is a Deweyan approach that forces students to engage in self-­governance of their own classrooms and schools through voting, elections, dialogue, and decision-­making. It is from their own schools, their first organizations outside of the family, that students should learn about the operations of their democracy: it is “practice” for becoming good citizens in the world. The life of the mind, in concert with the governance of one’s school, can simulate life far beyond it. The school is itself a mini-­community that mimics the larger world and is also part of that world. The final category is to think of education in the schools as instructional ground for deliberative democracy, where students are given the tools for a lifetime of debate, discussion, and consensus building. Teaching the processes of argument, criticism, and analysis pays off later, as students learn to use rationality and passion when debating the most wrenching problems of our time.

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Table 7.1: Public Opinion Challenges and Remedies. Challenge Area

Problem Type

Tools for Improvement

Citizen competence and knowledge

Low knowledge levels Difficulty discerning truth Inability to locate quality information

Digital/media literacy

Lack of journalistic tools Lure of quantitative data and predictive models

Data interpretation education Rigorous nonquantitative methods

Citizen passivity and disinterest Poor journalistic coverage of public opinion

Journalistic difficulties understanding the composition of “the public” Corporate lack of responsibility for public discourse

Boredom with public discourse about politics/ policy

Argumentation and debate pedagogy Listening

Inability to parse fluidity of social structure and culture

Refine reporting through demography

Fear of lost profits Inability to discern return on investment

Employee education and advancement “Difficult dialogue” projects

Table 7.1 lists the sorts of tools available to teachers that would fall in the broad categories of both deliberative civic education and the modeling approach Dewey wrote about. What can be done, through educational institutions, to set students up to become committed citizens of the future? How can teachers and college faculty instruct in ways that will enable their students to pay attention to the world, discern fact from fiction, locate quality information, and actually enjoy and contribute to democratic practice? It may sound a bit draconian, but my view is that our greatest opportunities are in formal educational settings, where students have no easy escape. First, among the tools that we can provide to students is proficiency in using the internet properly, or as some call it, “digital literacy.” The general idea, previously called “media literacy,” has been around since the 1970s, a moment when television was entirely diffused throughout the world and teachers worried about its effects. As I write there are a tremendous number of tools for teaching literacy available for free through the Center for Media Literacy, the National Association for Media Literacy Education, and a variety of other sites with classroom exercises.14 With regard to finding reliable information on public policy, politics, political candidates, and officeholders, there are also multiple free and well-­ supported sites now established and reliably updated. These are precious resources, and if teachers point students to them and require use, students

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will start to rely on them. The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, for example, has an invaluable site (FactCheck), as do both the Poynter Institute and the Washington Post.15 These sites serve as checks on claims by politicians and partisan media personalities, as well as other influential figures. Requiring students to use these resources is a powerful way to help them locate quality information, something they will need to do if they are to become the wise citizens Gallup assumed, the ones Dewey and Rachel DuBois thought were possible, and the ones Lippmann lost hope of ever seeing. Relatedly, the Columbia Journalism Review and the Nieman Journalism Lab have developed sites that contain academic research on “fake news” (as opposed to specific policy matters): what it is, how to spot it, and its effects on audiences.16 As we know in higher education, students rely on their handheld devices for much of their work and play but not necessarily for conventional subject matter or civic education. On the latter, the podcast—­showing students how to make their own and/or using the outstanding ones readily available—­is obviously a key tool for political engagement. And when podcasting is done well, it feels like entertainment. Faculty must help students, who have no way of discerning the quality of political content themselves, to learn to determine which ones are useful because they are created by respected authorities. In the same way that digital literacy enables shrewd, quality internet searching, focusing students on the best podcast creators will set them on course to find this type of media content when they are out of the educational system. Organizations like Common Sense Education have pursued digital literacy and provide guidance on how to choose podcasts that are enlightening and entertaining for K–­12 students.17 The programs created by experienced journalists, academics, former public officials, and prominent prosecutors abound, but students do need to know which to follow and why. Particularly helpful at the high school and college levels are those programs focused on civic dialogue and designed by journalists and social observers who are in their twenties and thirties. Beyond the specific policy content, they often model what interesting, productive, passionate, and civil conversation sounds like. When done well, students get a strong sense of how conversation can be powerful and exciting.18 One of Americans’ most dangerous, long-­running problems is our proclivity toward conspiratorial thinking and—­as Richard Hofstadter termed it—­“the paranoid style in American politics.” It is the overheated, hyperbolic fear that some elitist individual, cell, or organization is working surreptitiously to destroy the American way of life. Hofstadter traces it back to the nation’s founding, but there is no question that the internet,

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and social media in particular, has made it easy to create, distribute, and read conspiracies of all types. Some conspiratorial ideas make it on to major cable broadcasts and mainstream political websites, so it isn’t hard to find. J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood, in their excellent book Enchanted America, demonstrate just how damaging these theories can be, given their intuitive appeal and generally antidemocratic nature. As conspiratorial thinking becomes widespread and accepted as mainstream in the case of certain of these theories, trust in government and trust in each other are in grave danger. Teachers in K–­12, starting as early as middle school, would do well to take on popular conspiracies directly and show students exactly how to unpack them as they arise. This way, students can be led to discuss the often painful (e.g., racist) assumptions underlying them. Many of the current conspiracies involve immigrants, African Americans, Jews, and other ethnic or religious groups as the instigators of secret plans.19 The temptations of selective exposure to media content are great. If a teacher or professor isn’t there to require material, why not listen to podcasts and seek media that reinforce already-­held views instead of challenging them?20 We hope that what they have learned in school about navigating content will set students on a path to lifelong civic education of the best sort, but it is difficult to fight natural tendencies toward partisan-­based selectivity. We can’t force adults to read widely and fight the appeals of intellectual comfort; the best thing that educators can do is to help students locate high-­quality and diverse political content and simultaneously be honest with them about the challenges they will face as adults with less time and far more citizenly responsibilities. If teachers take this head-­on and discuss the dangers of selective exposure itself—­a destructive tendency we all have—­they might make a profound impact on students. Mindfulness about what it is we are doing when we start “googling,” and constantly questioning our own selection biases, is a power­ ful tool to give to young people. As I and others have proposed elsewhere, argumentation and debate are among the most important skills we can teach our students—­developing arguments, locating fact-­based evidence, learning how to rebut in a direct, analytic manner, and listening to opponents in a civilized fashion. It is yet another area where massive amounts of free instruction are available on the internet about how to teach debate and listening for elementary school grades through college. One of the more interesting programs for children is the Debate It Forward organization, founded by two debate experts and focused on young children. Creating the habits and skills that will boost civic participation for a lifetime is the undergirding of the program, which targets students at all ability levels and even

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those with learning challenges. The founders orient the program’s strategic plans around the three core goals of empathy, reason, and ownership (responsibility for one’s voice as they debate in communities). Debate It Forward integrates research, logic, ethics, perspective-­taking, and public speaking, all for youngsters.21 This, and many of the sophisticated guides designed for teachers, helps to emphasize the pedagogy of listening and arguing, obviously central to civic education.22

Journalism Since public polling became commonplace in American political discourse and exploded in the 1980s and 1990s, scholars and journalists have worried about the difficulty that reporters have interpreting polls. Even after decades of teaching journalism students, and those already in the field, use of public opinion data is generally poor (the same holds true for experimental data, epidemiological studies, and other forms of quantitative social science). Even the more sophisticated journalists clearly do not understand, for example, what “sampling error” actually is, how to judge polling organizations, how question wording and framing matter, the effects of timing on poll results, and so forth. Although interesting, it is not clear that the advent of experts who aggregate and judge polls by quality (Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight being the most prominent) has helped much at all. While Silver assigns weights to polls based on their quality, it doesn’t stop journalists at all from reporting out specific polls as soon as those polls land on their desks. And most of the polling aggregation techniques concern preelection polls because those are the only kind where predictions are tested against real results. This leaves out the question of issue polling and whether it means much. Encouraging journalists to do better is a work in progress, but at this moment in time we are far from the sort of understanding Phil Meyer hoped for in the 1970s when he wrote the seminal volume to help reporters, Precision Journalism. It has become clear that most journalists do not have proper training on how to interpret polls, and even when they do, the news cycle moves too quickly and the polls are too plentiful to enable the time needed to understand data and put it in the context of the political environment.23 In general, social scientists can only provide journalists the tools to boost skepticism; we can’t force them to use those tools, given their many constraints.24 That said, academic social scientists must keep advocating more thoughtful use of data by journalists and hope that we can make progress, because polls are not going away anytime soon. In addition to better use of data, there are other ways that journalists can more effectively cover the sentiments of the public, something they

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rightfully feel is important and interesting. Curiosity about the opinions of others will always be high, especially in politically fraught moments or election years. Let me take two examples of well-­meaning and oftentimes gripping approaches to journalism that need critique and change. One is the classic “person on the street” interview, which is a daily staple of newspaper and broadcast media reporting, as well as reporting through YouTube. What does the “regular” person think of the health care system, foreign entanglements in the Middle East, or our presidential candidates? Among the most common television interviews these days are those where a journalist grabs a voter standing in line or a participant in a political rally or demonstration. These interviews are usually so brief (thirty seconds would be a lengthy one) that, to my mind, they demean both the interviewer and the participant. The reporter has no time to get even a bit deep or to ask the kind of questions that might actually elaborate opinion. And it often seems as though the quick interview is meant to underscore the sheer thoughtlessness and ignorance of the subject, perhaps to shock or irk the viewer. This technique is attention-­grabbing, but the approach rarely helps us to understand whether the interviewee is informed at all and why they believe what they do. We are accustomed to this style, but many thoughtful journalists, editors, and academics have argued that we would be helped by eliminating the random “person on the street” technique altogether.25 All that reporters are doing is falling for the assumptions of omnicompetence that Lippmann warned against and Gallup ignored. Many people, even those at a rally, may be generally uninformed or unrepresentative of the crowd, and we simply have no idea what their knowledge base is. Instead of random person interviews, some observers of journalism encourage reporters to seek out opinion leaders—­folks who may have organized a rally, for example. Find interview subjects who can speak with some authority and good evidence about others whom they lead. Whether a rally organizer is to be believed or not is another issue, but on that matter, too, journalists can ask useful questions: Why are most people at these rallies? Do you need to recruit for them? Do people go to multiple rallies? How did you get your numbers? What are the specific issue-­related reasons people attend? Journalists can get better sources for spot interviews if they do the work to set them up. If they somehow must interview a random person as representative (the only reason why reporters can even justify these “vox pops,” as they are called in the industry), it would be responsible to tell the audience how many people they talked to and how it is that their interviewee reflects a larger pool of people. The truth, we fear, is that they speak to a few flamboyant figures and/or folks who smiled and were willing to go on camera.

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With regard to what gets asked of a “person on the street,” it is not worth conducting the interview unless we know more about them. Take the random person at a Trump rally during a spike in cases of COVID-­19: Do they believe scientists, public health officials, and physicians lie, as members of the so-­called deep state? If they don’t believe medical professionals, do they still trust their own doctors and local hospitals? Have they had any relatives helped by physicians? Why not explore the contradictions between doubting science but using it when you yourself (or better, your children) need treatment? This method of questioning used on a random rally attendee would actually be interesting, and it does get at their empirical experience in the world (their competence to have an opinion). Although again, it takes time. Journalists try to get their “color” from “person on the street” interviews, and they are nearly always unwilling (in a hurry or fearful of being impolite, or both) to challenge their interviewee. Intelligent questioning of this sort is rare. We know that people today hold uninformed opinions, but they also hold very strong ones that are conspiratorial, fly in the face of science, or have no underlying logic and consistency. Journalists could better challenge people in respectful ways, as they often do with elites and lawmakers; this would be quite helpful and interesting to viewers and readers. There will be cases in which the interviewee might actually be persuasive, but more likely the conversation will make us think harder because they believe their conspiracies, for example.26 Another common journalistic method, practiced most intensely during campaign seasons, is the “focus group” on broadcast and cable television. This is without a doubt one of the most problematic forms of covering public opinion, with all the superficiality noted above and the added mystery of where the participants came from, how many were asked but turned the producer down, what the dynamic of the group was, the nature of the conversation between the journalist/producer and this group before airtime, what was edited out, and so forth. The list of unaddressed methodological matters is long. A televisual focus group pretty much uses the worst of all methods and uses them simultaneously: it creates an artificial social group (people who typically don’t know each other at all) and questions them on matters they may or may not be competent to answer, with little challenge. A much better approach, although more work, is to find citizens in their normal social settings—­groups who have an identity, a sustained history together, and who have likely discussed the issue at hand before in that same group. These could be a regular crowd at a diner, a book club, a parents group, a town council, a social club, or a faith group. Seeking stable, natural groups of this source is obviously a much better way to understand closely held beliefs of people in

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places with a history (demographic, political, religious, economic) and a social dynamic that may represent a community at large. Scholars, particularly in anthropology and sociology, have been doing this type of ethnographic or “thick description” work for decades, and political scientists try to catch up.27 Journalists should, too. There are quite a few insightful observers of American journalism from within their own ranks and on the faculties of universities and colleges across the nation. The latter produce volumes, journals, and workshops to help reporters cover publics more effectively and fairly while still making it interesting to readers/audiences. It has become more common, although certainly not widespread or sustained, for newspapers to have an ombudsperson (often called a public advocate or public editor) to engage in self-­reflection of media craft and coverage. One of the most important leaders in academe who has tried to influence the profession by advocating self-­reflexivity (among other things) is Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University. Rosen understands that public opinion is a rich, continuing process, a process by which people come to their views through discussion. These are themes of John Dewey, but Rosen and those who have followed him have developed community-­based, situational techniques that journalists can adopt to mine local discussions and report them accurately to audiences. Reporters can do this, no matter their particular biases, and can make bias in discourse (their own or that of others) part of productive conversation, one that inspires and leads to better public policy and increased civility.28 Finally, on journalism, a note about groups and their opinions: As I argued in chapter 5 on immigrants, we have a history of thinking about the United States as a conglomeration of groups, whether native-­born whites, immigrants, or ethnic and racial minorities. This can be a reasonable way to discuss politics, the economy, and the culture of a nation if done responsibly. Yet it is during and after presidential elections that we see just how clearly their approaches fail us, and even offend us. While I write in 2021 for example, journalists of all stripes insist (constantly) on grouping African Americans together as the monolithic “Black vote.” It takes many forms: President Trump didn’t know how to appeal to “Blacks” or the “Black vote,” while Joe Biden is “liked by Blacks.” Many reporters and pundits express puzzlement that Black respondents had not been choosing Black candidates in pre-­primary opinion polls (e.g., Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker). Needless to say, putting all African Americans in one category is inaccurate: we know that within the community there are many patterns of belief but also important differences in income, ideology, and intensity of feeling that really do matter. And as always with campaign polling, so uneven in quality, there is a causality problem: a

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candidate performs poorly in a poll and is quickly deemed to be “having trouble with Latinx voters” (or “uneducated white men”). Then the candidate tumbles farther, and that tumbling might well be the result of the media narrative and not the unpopularity of the candidate. We can’t tell in retrospect. And during campaigns, there is not enough money to track this in real time. It should be obvious that media create narratives very quickly, for efficiency’s sake, and to put candidates in boxes or “lanes” (the progressive lane or the centrist lane) for their own ease of reporting. Candidates complain about this, and rightly so. For our purposes, what matters is the chronic creation of monolithic groups that are simply rough demographic categories, but not meaningful ones. It may be helpful in the day-­to-­day tactics of political operatives during campaigns, but the way it can warp elections and issue debates is hardly democracy enhancing.29 Another example along these lines, a dangerous one, is the “can a woman win?” discourse of the 2016 presidential election and the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Will this or that group accept a woman president? Journalists asked this over and over, so anyone following this coverage might have begun to wonder it themselves, whether they had previously or not. The narrative itself legitimates the notion of female fitness for leadership, even though the journalist often points out a double standard relative to male candidates. In addition, there is the “third-­ person effect” among citizens: media don’t affect me but they might affect you. Here’s how it might play out in this context: “I think a woman can win the nomination but I don’t think others agree, according to the newspaper. So I should vote against her too and go with a winner.”30 While journalists are not sociologists or population experts, they can easily boost their sophistication levels by taking cursory looks at demographic statistics, to better understand within-­group diversity and to avoid treating women, racial, and ethnic groups as faceless, monolithic automatons who all believe the same things and share the same frames of mind. That bias was highly problematic and distorting, as we saw even in the progressive Americans All—­Immigrants All broadcasts of the 1930s, and there is no place for it now, eighty years later. More work on the part of journalists would enrich their reporting and enable audiences to understand that “diversity” in a voting or opining population is not simply recognizing Black/white, gay/straight, and other dichotomies that are themselves too roughly drawn. Journalists who follow more nuanced practices as a rule will be rewarded with better predictive powers as well. There was, to choose an obvious example, a clear misunderstanding of what “blue-­collar” voters thought in the years leading up to the 2016 election. If journalists had scrutinized the group more closely and

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engaged in sustained conversation with actual groups on the ground, as opposed to artificially constructed focus groups, occasional quick and superficial attitude polling, and “person on the street” interviews, they might have done far better in foreseeing the election outcomes across states.

Large Companies and Publics Whether or not the most profitable and largest corporations in the United States have any responsibility for the nature and quality of public discourse is a controversial matter. It had been our automatic reflex as Americans to say that companies should be generally apolitical except for “common good”–­type advocacy in their own areas of activity (e.g., BP, traditionally an oil company, advocating for clean and renewable energy sources, or McDonalds introducing and advertising healthy options available at their restaurants). But industries have long supported particular candidates and now are often forced—­dramatically—­right into the polarized environment of national politics. Currently, corporations and smaller companies worry about whether to advertise on television or radio programs that deny that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. More broadly, should they risk associating their brand at all with a former president who did so much damage to the trust we must have in elections and who inspired a deadly storming of the US Capitol? How can we think expansively about the ways companies behave as they shape public tastes and public opinion? In the 1930s there was little discussion of these matters, and a guileless, celebratory consumer capitalism was the norm. Most influential people and most Americans felt as though companies inherently served the public interest, producing and marketing consumer goods and industrial supplies to keep the nation strong. As Calvin Coolidge famously said in the 1920s, “The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of the opinion that the great majority of people will always find these are the moving impulses of our life.”31 It was a time when phrases and movements like corporate social responsibility (CSR) didn’t exist, although there were certainly company executives who felt their efforts to be patriotic and important to the nation, whether in their day-­to-­day work supporting New Deal efforts or in the preparation for war. Beginning in the 1960s, the CSR movement blossomed and is now a loosely defined but pervasive sensibility around the globe. Many large companies and their industries have done much soul-­searching (whether it truly changed their behavior for the better or not) about what they produce, the effects of

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their business on citizen well-­being, how they treat their employees and distant subcontractors, or their support of national security, among other areas. The “best practices” in CSR are as extensive and complex as American industry itself, so it is defined in myriad ways in different sectors. But there are obvious, shared approaches among major corporations, such as philanthropy: companies donate to everything from rebuilding efforts in storm-­damaged communities and scholarships for needy students to expansions of art galleries and theaters.32 The debates about the nature of effective CSR, and “business ethics” more broadly, are fierce. Viewed within the broader frame of American history, the changes in our expectations about corporate responsibility have been rapid. Accusations of “greenwashing” and companies looking more socially responsible than they actually are is an evolving conversation—in particular, whether they would improve their behavior or philanthropy without the eyes of watchful regulators and activists on them. It may be that some find this particular angle irrelevant as long as the result is a good one. Motives are important to understand, though, if companies are to create lasting programs and sustain those efforts, even when no one is watching. Along these lines, one of the companies of most interest has been Starbucks because of its rapid growth and ubiquity. It began as a socially conscious company with many victories (e.g., ethical sourcing of coffee beans, employee benefits, etc.) and has extended this aspect of their brand over the years in impressive ways by building service programs and encouraging participation in local events across communities.33 Their mistakes have been staggering at times, sometimes addressed quickly and directly, sometimes not. Probably the most recent high-­profile challenge has been their struggle to keep stores safe and comfortable while avoiding racial profiling and blatant discrimination against customers. In 2018 there was a dramatic interaction, captured on video, of two African American men being asked to leave a Philadelphia Starbucks store because they looked suspicious to an employee (they had not ordered and said they were waiting to meet someone).34 The public outcry was great, and Starbucks, in addition to its apologies, closed all eight thousand US stores for a day to conduct racial bias training for its employees.35 There was mixed reaction to this effort, ranging from the very complimentary to accusations that Starbucks’ leadership was superficial and ham-­handed, had failed to use the best techniques, and was not committed to sustained efforts in tolerance. I find it difficult to take a side in this because all of the parties are correct to some extent; the motivation and fear on the part of the company leadership was palpable, and they seemed earnest about making change. But critics were also correct in not-

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ing that racial, ethnic, and other forms of tolerance cannot be taught in one awkward (by many reports) training day. Critics argued that it was a false display of sincerity—­a way for the company to put the more complex matter in a box, seal it up, and avoid further bad press. To my mind, we need to be far less cynical about company motives in this case and most others. Instead, the focus should be on pressure and results, and there are a vast number of organizations that rate companies on all aspects of their social responsibility, internal and external.36 Company leadership teams, some business reporters, and academics who study social responsibility know about these resources, but most Americans are not aware that they exist. Reporters would do well to learn which of these rankings are well executed, and activists should be use them to speak in informed, sophisticated ways about companies they find problematic. What are the links between CSR and the issues raised throughout this book? There are many. Although journalists, educators, and elected leaders are typically in the strongest position to improve the quality of public opinion and diversify the methods for understanding it, companies, industry organizations, and their trade publications can take on a greater role. They may be primarily interested in public engagement and opinion in terms of how it affects their bottom lines, but that does not prevent them from doing what Starbucks and other socially conscious companies have done. If nothing else, the dramatic Starbucks approach to racial bias training got most Americans paying attention, arguing, and thinking: Should a company train employees to be more tolerant and self-­conscious about their interactions with ethnic others? Don’t employees themselves have cultural ownership of what happens in their stores? Can they create open, tolerant places that support conversation and even, with the right conditions, prompt difficult political discourse? In the case of Starbucks, their corporate headquarters experiments with these notions, and again, we need to get past our cynicism, which is so very easy to fall back into, and see such efforts as trials that may just start to work.37 Companies, particularly large ones, have tremendous freedom in creating opportunities of argument, civic engagement, and the improvement of passionate discourse. Teachers and journalists, by contrast, are far more constrained because they are dependent on school administrators or ­editors to give them the time and resources they need to make change. So let me underscore that none of the practical ideas identified in this chapter can be pursued without strong leadership and commitment in school districts and media organizations. We see particular teachers or journalists doing exactly the sort of work highlighted here, and some are called out in the notes below. But these heroes, doing so much for students, readers, and

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audiences with few resources, should not have to struggle so hard. Local leadership is the key, and let us hope that those who can indeed change their institutions see clearly what is the most profoundly disturbing story of the twenty-­first century: the extraordinarily fragile nature of American democracy.

* Over the past few years, political scientists and many other writers have produced compelling books about America with unnerving titles about the death of democracy, of freedom, and of national cohesion.38 Some lay out the challenges—­lack of citizen knowledge, partisan divides, voter suppression, biased media, campaign finance, and the corrupting influence of money in politics. Others elaborate the problems and then offer solutions, from the possible to the very difficult (e.g., remedies that demand constitutional amendments or changes to the composition of the Supreme Court). All of these debates are vital as we diagnose what has gone right, what has gone very wrong, and what can or cannot be repaired. My goal has been to carve out the particular problems of public opinion and how it is that the phrase itself, as well as its central figure—­the public—­emerged in the early twentieth century. An origin story helps us to pinpoint fundamental weaknesses in the words, their worrisome impacts, and critically, how powerful ideas are intertwined with the volatile life of democracy itself. Concepts that matter deeply to us are hard to avoid, even if they are messy and contested. No one said it better than the philosopher J. L. Austin: “Faced with the nonsense question ‘What is the meaning of a word?’ and perhaps dimly recognizing it to be nonsense, we are nevertheless not inclined to give it up.”39

Acknowledgments

No era in American politics matches any other, but the decade of the 1930s seems to provide endless examples of how we, here in 2021, are shaped by that enormously important decade. To study any aspect of the period demands more interdisciplinary tools and texts than any political scientist can muster. But the notes at the end of this book make clear just how this particular meditation on the Depression years is possible: I depend heavily on work by outstanding historians of the period, as do my colleagues in political science. Historians make it possible for us to try and build theory but also to reflect on larger puzzles of our own field. I researched some sections of this book while president of the University of Connecticut, so I owe a great deal to colleagues in my office who supported me, hauled books around campus, protected my time, and brought joy and optimism to our hectic office every day, no matter what. Thanks to my beloved friends in Gulley Hall: Rachel Rubin (our boss), Deb Merritt, Joanne Fazio, Jennifer Burckardt, Mike Kirk, Darren Cook, Sue Locke, Lillian Bosques, and Julie Coia. Colleagues from various disciplines worked to keep me on a straight path, especially Robert Eisinger, who read and critiqued nearly every page and note with his terrific rigor and panache. The two anonymous readers for the University of Chicago Press understood my broad approach and underscored how to clarify the arguments. Bryant Simon was happy to tromp around frigid Queens, looking for lost traces of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. His effervescence, his imagination, and his way of thinking make Bryant’s work an inspiration. The librarians at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library were kind and helpful, as were the folks at the Gallup Organization, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University, the University of Iowa Libraries, the University of Illinois Library, the University of Connecticut Library, and the many archivists at the New York Public Library. I am continually amazed by what this magnificent institution will do for scholars (for free!), and I am particularly grateful to the Billy Rose Theater Division at Lincoln Center. Many thanks to Alexandra

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Harden, who did an absolutely wonderful job working to secure permissions and obtain my dream illustrations for inclusion in the manuscript. John Dearborn, a wonderful and generous scholar, located a critical illustration that I would never have come upon myself. I have been fortunate to work with Chuck Myers of the University of Chicago Press. He is always supportive and candid with authors, myself included, and he has not lost his sense of humor despite the hardship presented to the Press by the pandemic. It’s an honor to be associated with Chuck and his colleagues, who are so critical to the development of political science as a field. John Donohue of Westchester Publishing Services was a wonderful copy editor, and I am grateful for his close reading and his patience. Thanks to my family—­Doug, Daniel, and Becky—­for love, laughter, and not rolling their eyes when I said I was writing another book. Chapter 5 is for my father, who lived the harrowing 1920s and 1930s in Nuremberg, fled here, and cherished America in that profound way only a desperate, stateless immigrant can. Finally, I dedicate the book to the memory of Jim Beniger. It’s been decades now, and I’m still somehow writing for his praise.

Notes

Chapter One

1. From John Ford’s film adaption of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath of 1939. 2. For an overview of recent work on political polarization, see Nolan McCarty, Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). On truth, see recent work by the philosopher Michael P. Lynch, such as Know-­It-­All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture (New York: Liveright, 2019). 3. Many have circled around my own thesis or come to their own conclusions about political culture and opinion formation between the wars. One example is the outstanding book about public opinion measurement in the 1930s and early 1940s, Daniel J. Robinson’s The Measure of Democracy: Polling, Market Research, and Public Life, 1930–­1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999). In addition to his novel research on the United States and Canada, Robinson describes the excuses George Gallup’s organization made for undersampling Black citizens: There were too few voting in the South, so polling wasn’t so useful in election forecasting. 4. Warren I. Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973), 212. 5. Taken together, the forty-­eight guides are one of the most revealing and ambitious portraits of a nation ever attempted or completed. Rowan University has created a website that enables one to find every guide online: https://​libguides​ .rowan.edu/c.php?g=248106&p=1653082. Wendy Griswold has written a comprehensive book on the guides. See her American Guides: The Federal Writers’ Project and the Casting of American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). 6. Lawrence W. Levine, “American Culture and the Great Depression,” The Yale Review 74, no. 2 (1985): 196. 7. See Hank O’Neal to start: A Vision Shared: A Portrait of America, 1935–­1943 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976). 8. See Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York: Pocket Books, 1936); Marjorie Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget: Or Live Smartly on What You Have (Indianapolis: Bobbs-­Merrill, 1937); Roger W. Babson, Cheer Up! Better Times Ahead (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1932); and Edmund Jacobson, You Must Relax: A Practical Method of Reducing the Strains of Modern Living (New York: Whittlesey House, 1934).

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9. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 323–­324. 10. Jefferson Cowie, Rethinking the New Deal in American History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 11. Cowie, Rethinking the New Deal in American History, 210. 12. Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright, 2013), 57. 13. It is fascinating to read Hofstadter’s work from the 1950s and 1960s, in any era. He was not always right but was without question one of the more insightful American historians we have ever had. Mention of his ideas (whether properly cited or not), even in televised circles of pundits, have exploded recently, like our two-­hundred-­year old American love of conspiracy theories. 14. Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (New York: Random House, 2018), 139–­140. 15. Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), 29. 16. Hofstadter is cited by writers and politicians of all stripes, but a fine example is Paul Krugman, “The Paranoid Style in G.O.P. Politics,” New York Times, October 8, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/opinion/gop-trump​-ka​ va​naugh-conspiracies-partisan.html. 17. See Barna William Donovan, Conspiracy Films: A Tour of Dark Places in the American Conscious (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011). 18. Wendy L. Wall, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 19. Sarah Maza, Thinking about History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). 20. Jacques Lévy and Emmanuelle Tricoire’s interview with Skinner, “Quentin Skinner: ‘Concepts Only Have Histories,’” EspacesTemps.net, Summer 2004, https://www.espacestemps.net/en/articles/quentin-skinner/. Maza’s is an outstanding survey of the current state of historiography, taking on the most difficult questions of cause and effect, whether we learn from history, what constitutes useful data, and how ideologies can serve as useful and problematic frames (as in the case of Marxian historians). See Maza, Thinking about History. In writing about “the history of what,” she quotes the founder of the Annales school of French social history Marc Bloch, who wrote in 1953 that “The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that where he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies.” Maza agrees: “Just as ogres (and ogresses) don’t care about your status or occupation if they want to make a meal out of you, so should historians be indiscriminately and equally interested in people of all kinds” (Thinking about History, 83). See also Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, trans. Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1953). 21. There are many styles and approaches under the general heading of “sociology of knowledge,” and a large number might also be called “intellectual history.” I use the terms interchangeably here. The founder of the field of sociology of knowledge was Émile Durkheim, and many others have taken up the approach, albeit in different ways, Michel Foucault most prominently. Originally published in 1912, see Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E.

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Fields (New York: Free Press, 1995). More recently, see E. Doyle McCarthy, Knowledge as Culture: The New Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Routledge, 1996). 22. Disciplinary divides have not been helpful in the study of public opinion; far from it. Some social scientists avoid the study of culture, seeing it as “soft,” which might sound bizarre to the nonacademic. It most certainly is bizarre. And many scholars interested in culture and public discourse skirt the study of institutions, as if ideas do not come from people and organizations. Choosing fields has been generally unproductive, which is why some of the best work about the evolution and meaning of public opinion was done in the 1930s and 1940s, when opinion scholars were broader and did not need to choose subdisciplines, niches, or methods for professional advancement in universities. I hope to follow and revive their approaches here, although few of us will ever emulate the breadth of a Paul Lazarsfeld or Richard Hofstadter. 23. The scholarly literature on the meanings of “the public” and “public opinion” is not particularly large. A summary of the various approaches is Carroll J. Glynn, Susan Herbst, Mark Lindeman, Garrett O’Keefe, and Robert Y. Shapiro, Public Opinion, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2015), and Robert Y. Shapiro and Lawrence R. Jacobs, eds., The Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Although many years have passed, the best and most provocative essay is still Paul Lazarsfeld, “Public Opinion and the Classical Tradition,” Public Opinion Quarterly 21, no. 1 (Spring 1957): 39–­53. On the evolution of the idea of public opinion and relationship to the history of quantification, see Susan Herbst, Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), and multiple essays in The Modern Social Sciences, vol. 7 of the outstanding Cambridge History of Science, edited by Theodore M. Porter and Dorothy Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). None of this is satisfying to those looking for the best or most useful definitions for all circumstances, but the debate will continue in interesting ways. The same is true for a variety of related concepts, such as “the people” defined differently in various models of democracy, different time periods, and varying nations. See Edmund S. Morgan, Investing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988). A recent book that opens up many of the vital questions about people in a democracy is Yascha Mounk, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). 24. The founders discussed the public and public opinion in so many of their published documents and private letters, although the notions of “the public” and “public opinion” were not well-­established terms. This makes it difficult to discern how their usage compares to twentieth-­century concepts. Nonetheless, in one way or another they tackled the issues I touch on throughout this book—­the apathy of the people, the dangers of tyranny to a disengaged public, and the basic cognition needed to be good democratic citizens. Among the places to start are the vital essays at the heart of the founding by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: New American Library, 1961). On factionalism, see George Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=15&page =transcript (accessed August 29, 2019). A good summary of Jefferson’s views, with a bibliography on his educational writings, is M. Andrew Holowchak,

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“Thomas Jefferson,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2019 edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries​ /jefferson/. 25. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-­intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1962). 26. See Ruth Braunstein, Prophets and Patriotism: Faith in Democracy across the Political Divide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017). 27. The notion of “magical thinking”—­the fictions that help people get through life—­and their manifestation in politics is a huge area first mapped by early anthropologists and sociologists of religion, culture, and politics. Social psychologists later joined the inquiry, as have, more recently, thoughtful people who study American politics. See for example J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood, Enchanted America: How Intuition and Reason Divide Our Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). 28. Timothy Snyder, “The American Abyss,” New York Times, January 9, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html. 29. Charles Tilly, “Speaking Your Mind without Elections, Surveys or Social Movements,” Public Opinion Quarterly 47, no. 4 (1983): 461–­478. 30. See Stephen Smith, “Radio: The Internet of the 1930s,” American RadioWorks, November 10, 1929, http://www.americanradioworks.org/segments​/radio​ -the-internet-of-the-1930s/. 31. Philip Converse, “Changing Conceptions of Public Opinion in the Political Process,” Public Opinion Quarterly 51, no. 2 (1987, Supplement, 50th anniversary issue): S12–­S24. 32. On Roosevelt’s use of polls, see Robert M. Eisinger, The Evolution of Presidential Polling (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); on the Clergy Letters, see Mary E. Stuckey, Political Vocabularies: FDR, The Clergy Letters, and the Elements of Political Argument (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2018). Stuckey is by far one the best analysts of FDR’s rhetorical activities, and those of us coming in late to study Roosevelt are deeply indebted to her. 33. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at Oglethorpe University,” May 22, 1932, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents​ /address-oglethorpe-university-atlanta-georgia. 34. Herbst, Numbered Voices, 69–­87. 35. George Gallup and Saul Forbes Rae, The Pulse of Democracy: The Public-­ Opinion Poll and How It Works (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940), 286. 36. The history and value of public opinion polling is fascinating. To start, see Glynn et al., Public Opinion, and Porter and Ross, The Modern Social Sciences. On the academic evolution of polling, see Jean Converse, Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence, 1890–­1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). 37. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Opening of the New York World’s Fair,” April 30, 1939, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu​ /documents​/opening-the-new-york-worlds-fair. 38. American newspapers successfully blocked radio stations from news reporting for years until an acceptable agreement was reached. In Germany and Italy, by contrast, radio was used consistently for political talk and propaganda from the start.

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39. Steve Craig, “How America Adopted Radio: Demographic Differences in Set Ownership Reported in the 1930–­1950 U.S. Censuses,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 48 (June 2004): 179–­195. 40. These and other books of the 1930s are discussed in chapter 6. For information on the seven-­minute workout, see Gretchen Reynold, “The Scientific 7-­Minute Workout,” New York Times, May 9, 2013, https://well.blogs.nytimes​.com​ /2013/05/09/the-scientific-7-minute-workout/. 41. Katznelson, Fear Itself. See also Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). For insights into the elusive meaning of the “structure of feeling,” I lean here on two studies: Devika Sharma and Frederik Tygstrup, Structures of Feeling: Affectivity and the Study of Culture (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015); and Lisa Peschel, “‘Structures of Feeling’ as Methodology and the Re-­emergence of Holocaust Survivor Testimony in 1960s Czechoslovakia,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 26 (Spring 2012): 161–­172. Chapter Two

1. There are several interesting memoirs by Roosevelt’s contemporaries, and some of our finest twentieth-­century historians have applied their talents to many aspects of his presidency, including his charismatic approach to speech. My work is heavily synthetic and analytic, drawing on much of this. For those hoping to understand FDR’s place in history, the peculiarities of his leadership, and the idiosyncratic nature of his adaptation to the times, one would do well by starting with Stephen Skowronek’s now-­classic book The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 2. An outlying argument questioning the received history is Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). Shlaes notes some similar approaches of Hoover and Roosevelt and disputes the importance of government intervention in saving the American economy. See also Eric Rauchway’s critique of Shales, “FDR’s Critics: Was the New Deal Un-­ American?,” Slate, July 5, 2007, https://slate.com/culture/2007/07/the-forgotten​ -man-a-new-history-of-the-great-depression-by-amity-shlaes.html. 3. An excellent forum on these matters and how they are related was gathered by Rosie Gillies. See “Is Populism a Problem?,” Boston Review, October 26, 2019, http://​boston​review.net/reading-lists-politics/rosie-gillies-boston​-review​-populism​ -problem. 4. See Jean-­Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and the Discourses, trans. G. D. Cole (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1950), and Aristotle, The Politics, trans. T. A. Sinclair (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1962). 5. Gene Smiley, Rethinking the Great Depression (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002). 6. Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright, 2013). 7. Quoted in Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 217. 8. Lawrence W. Levine, “American Culture and the Great Depression,” The Yale Review 74, no. 2 (1985): 205–­206.

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9. Rauchway not only details Hoover’s persistent battle against the New Deal and all it stood for, ideologically, but he also analyzes both leaders’ personal characteristics and leadership tendencies, which were vital to understanding how this transition went so poorly: Eric Rauchway, Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash over the New Deal (New York: Basic Books, 2018). 10. There are many outstanding books, articles, and films about Roosevelt. It is impossible to rank the best, but certainly at the top is Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s magisterial three-­volume work published from 1957 through 1960, The Age of Roosevelt (New York: Houghton Mifflin). More recent works are Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life (New York: Viking, 2017), and Jean Edward Smith, FDR (New York: Random House, 2008). I have found the books by ­Roosevelt’s staffers to be helpful, if fawning. Most delightful and comprehensive is his speechwriter Sam Rosenman’s dense Working with Roosevelt (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952). 11. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 2, The Coming of the New Deal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), 3. 12. See Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1933, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/inaugural​ -address-8. 13. See the early issues of Broadcasting magazine, the major trade journal of the radio industry, published from 1931 through 2001. Issues of this and other journals have been collected and scanned in their entirety at American Radio History, a website devoted primarily to American radio and television trade journals: https://www.americanradiohistory.com/index.htm (accessed December 17, 2019). 14. Hadley Cantril and Gordon W. Allport, The Psychology of Radio (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935), 18. 15. See Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Radio and the Printed Page: An Introduction to the Study of Radio and Its Role in the Communication of Ideas (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940); and Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, “Mass Communication, Popular Taste and Organized Social Action,” in The Communication of Ideas, ed. Lyman Bryson (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), 95–­118. A recent book that extends the concept of dysfunction for contemporary times is Eitan Hersh, Politics Is for Power: How to Move beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change (New York: Scribner, 2020). On the expansive cultural changes radio brought to all pockets of America, see Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). 16. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1964). 17. Ann McCormick, “Radio: A Great Unknown Force,” New York Times, March 27, 1932, 29. 18. Anyone interested in public opinion and the American presidency will find Smith’s book a delight: Ira R. T. Smith with Joe Alex Morris, “Dear Mr. President . . .” The Story of Fifty Years in the White House Mail Room (New York: Julian Messner, 1949). 19. This is from the collection of letters, edited brilliantly and presented by Lawrence and Cornelia Levine, The People and the President: America’s Conversation

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with FDR (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 123. On overall patterns, see Leila A. Sussmann, Dear FDR: A Study of Political Letter-­Writing (Totowa, NJ: Bedminster Press, 1963). Roosevelt often asked radio audiences to write to him, which accounts for at least some of his massive mail counts, but he also commissioned a specialized effort in 1935 to query all American clergy on their thoughts about the New Deal. Just below 10 percent responded, according to Mary Stuckey: 8,294 priests, ministers, and rabbis across the nation wrote to the White House. Some letters are neatly typed, others are scrawled on scraps of paper. Many letters are multiple pages in length, whereas others are brief. For the most part they are baldly candid, giving the administration feedback on New Deal programs. A large number praised Prohibition and they scolded the president for lifting the ban on liquor production and sales (the Twenty-­First Amendment to the Constitution ended Prohibition). All letters are cataloged and available to peruse at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York. The premier analysis of the clergy letters is Mary E. Stuckey, Political Vocabularies: FDR, The Clergy Letters, and the Elements of Political Argument (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2018). Also on presidential mail, from FDR through President Nixon, see Brandon Rottinghaus, “‘Dear Mr. President’: The Institutionalization and Politicization of Public Opinion Mail in the White House,” Political Science Quarterly 121, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 451–­476. 20. Levine and Levine, The People and the President, 263. 21. See one example of Hurja collecting original data, where Hurja polled the public about the increasing threat of Huey Long’s “Share the Wealth” movement: Robert E. Snyder, “Huey Long and the Presidential Election of 1936,” Louisiana History 16, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 117–­143. 22. There were a variety of ways that Hurja and analysts like him made what they believed were correctives. For example, they would estimate that support demonstrated by polls was too high or too low to be accurate by looking at how a particular geographic area voted in previous elections, always a vital data point for understanding an upcoming vote. See Melvin G. Holli, The Wizard of Washington: Emil Hurja, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Birth of Public Opinion Polling (New York: Palgrave, 2002). Very helpful is Robert Eisinger’s broader look at presidents and opinion polling, a book that puts Roosevelt’s efforts in context of twentieth-­century presidential approaches to measurement of public sentiment: Eisinger, The Evolution of Presidential Polling (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). See also Mary E. Stuckey’s excellent book on the 1936 campaign and shaping/measuring public opinion, Voting Deliberatively: FDR and the 1936 Presidential Campaign (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015). 23. In the early days of the Roosevelt presidency, radio was not a critical source for news. The reason was that the newspapers fought the new medium, objecting to radio news reporting. Newspaper leaders believed that radio would cut into their readership in dramatic ways, and the fierce back-­and-­forth between radio stations and the print media organizations went on for years. Industry leaders finally came to a settlement—­the Biltmore Agreement—­that restricted news reporting on radio to five-­minute intervals, once in the morning and once in the evening. The agreement quickly fell apart as radio stations figured out how to circumvent the restrictions. On the press–­radio battles, see George E. Lott Jr.,

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“The Press-­Radio War of the 1930s,” Journal of Broadcasting 14, no. 3 (Summer 1970): 275–­286. 24. The best place to explore the interdisciplinary field of public opinion in the 1930s is the Public Opinion Quarterly (https://academic.oup.com/poq/pages​/about), which was first published in 1937 and contains articles by both industry opinion researchers and academic ones. It is still published, with a similarly diverse audience. 25. A. N. Holcombe, “The Measurement of Public Opinion,” American Political Science Review 19 (1925): 123–­124. 26. This was due to their sampling technique, which focused on wealthier Americans (those with cars and telephones) instead of a proper cross-­section of citizens. Famously, George Gallup predicted a Roosevelt victory that same year, launching his successful business. 27. The word “pollster,” from “huckster,” was already in use; it is not clear who coined it, although some point to Columbia University professor Lindsay Rogers. See his The Pollsters: Public Opinion, Politics and Democratic Leadership (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949). See also Amy Fried’s essay on the importance of Rogers’ contributions, “The Forgotten Lindsay Rogers and the Development of American Political Science,” American Political Science Review 100 (November 2006): 555–­561. 28. That began to change in the 1960s, and now presidents have their own extensive proprietary polling conducted through their campaign reelection operations, by the national party organizations, by political action committees, and others. 29. Holli, The Wizard of Washington, 64; emphasis added. 30. “Political Notes: Roosevelt, Farley & Co.,” Time 27, no. 9 (March 2, 1936). On the history of public opinion measurement, see Jean M. Converse, Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence, 1890–­1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), or Sarah Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). 31. See Harwood L. Childs’s discussion along these lines in “By Public Opinion I Mean,” Public Opinion Quarterly 3, no. 2 (April 1939): 327–­336. 32. Despite the acceleration of activity from so many quarters, in a rush to capture the opinions, needs, and desires of Americans, there were concerns that public opinion was actually a nebulous term, and our authoritative methods to measure it were overblown. Other ways of knowing public opinion still thrived, from counting participants at events and rallies to buying behavior, stock market activity, and even gambling odds. Betting on presidential election outcomes has a particularly long history, with lively and well-­organized markets in existence by the mid-­nineteenth century. And it was surprisingly accurate in predicting outcomes of presidential elections. As Paul Rhode and Koleman Strumpf note, the activity was illegal but was done openly nonetheless, and many bookmakers were available for placing bets, in the tens of millions and hundreds of millions in some election periods. Much of the betting activity was in New York, likely half of the national share. They report that “In the 1880s, betting moved out of the poolrooms and became centered on the Curb Exchange (the informally organized predecessor to the AMEX [American Stock Exchange]) and the major Broadway hotels until the mid-­1910s. In the 1920s and 1930s, specialist firms of betting com-

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missioners, operating out of offices on Wall Street, took over the trade. . . . [B]y the 1930s, most of the reported wagering involved large (six-­figure) amounts advanced by unnamed leaders from the business or entertainment worlds.” Paul W. Rhode and Koleman S. Strumpf, “Historical Presidential Betting Markets,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 18, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 128. 33. Fritz Heider, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1958). 34. For a review of literature on lay theories across disciplines, see my “The Meaning of Public Opinion: Citizens’ Constructions of Political Reality,” Media, Culture & Society 15 (1993): 437–­454. 35. Schlesinger, The Age of Roosevelt, 2:558. 36. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt. Rosenman, a judge, political advocate, friend, and advisor, was also an occasional speechwriter for the president through the years. See also Raymond Moley, After Seven Years (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939). There is really no scientifically defensible way to choose a representative sample of Roosevelt’s speeches that somehow refer to the popular sentiment or the public, given the sheer diversity and idiosyncratic nature of both the speeches and audiences. But I did apply a somewhat systematic approach using keywords and phrases like “public opinion.” Helpful is the comprehensive American Presidency Project, a database compiled by scholars and hosted by the University of California at Santa Barbara, that enables keyword searches within and across presidential speeches. This is an authoritative source for public statements by presidents, from Washington to Trump. Use of the site is free of charge and can be accessed here: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/about. 37. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia,” May 22, 1932, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency​.ucsb.edu​ /documents/address-oglethorpe-university-atlanta-georgia. For a brief but useful essay on the speech, see Paul Stephen Hudson, “A Call for ‘Bold Persistent Experimentation’: FDR’s Oglethrope University Commencement Address, 1932,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 78, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 361–­375. 38. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Campaign Address on Prohibition, Sea Girt, New Jersey,” August 27, 1932, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency​ .ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-prohibition-sea-girt-new-jersey. See also Tom Hester, “Sea Girt Recalls Legacy as Site Where FDR Launched Presidential Bid,” NJ.com, August 24, 2008, https://www.nj.com/news/2008/08/when_sea​_girt​_and_a​ _scoundrel_1.html. 39. Graham White argues that Roosevelt was “Jeffersonian” (as opposed to “Hamiltonian”) in his view of a wise populace, always the font of true democracy. See his FDR and the Press (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). 40. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at Chautauqua, N.Y.,” August 14, 1936, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents​​ /address-chautauqua-ny. 41. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Jackson Day Dinner Address, Washington, D.C.,” January 8, 1936, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency​.ucsb​ .edu/documents/jackson-day-dinner-address-washington-dc. 42. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Radio Interview on Government Reporting to the People,” May 9, 1939, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency​ .ucsb.edu/documents/radio-interview-government-reporting-the-people.

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43. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Letter to All Governors on the Selective Service Act,” September 21, 1940, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency​ .ucsb.edu/documents/letter-all-governors-the-selective-service-act. 44. Leo C. Rosten, “Roosevelt and the Washington Correspondents,” Public Opinion Quarterly 1, no. 1 (January 1937): 38. 45. See Linda Lotridge Levin, The Making of FDR: The Story of Stephen T. Early, America’s First Modern Press Secretary (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008), and Elmer E. Cornwell Jr., “The Presidential Press Conference,” Midwest Journal of Political Science 4 (November 1960): 370–­389. See also B. H. Winfield’s description of the press meetings and how he used a variety of techniques and “rules” to manipulate reporters, “Roosevelt’s Efforts to Influence the News during His First Term Press Conferences,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 11 (Spring 1981): 189–­199. 46. Graham argues that Roosevelt overestimated—­purposely—­the opposition and hatred of publishers and editorialists. FDR thought, Graham posits, that this approach might garner sympathy. There is no question that the magnate William Randolph Hearst turned against Roosevelt, but even through the most difficult years of the New Deal he had a fair amount of support, more than he would admit. 47. The press conferences, transcribed by his staff, are in the Franklin D. ­Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum (approximately four cubic feet of ­paper documents) and online at http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/collec​ tions​/franklin/?p=collections/findingaid&id=508. While Roosevelt discusses the many New Deal programs, associated politics and plans, as well as matters of foreign and domestic policy far from economics, there are many entries under the heading “Newspapers” and it is to these that I paid most attention. There are hundreds of such entries, thanks to keen indexing by White House stenographers. Some are passing references by the president about newspaper content while others are extended arguments, critique, thanks, or ridicule of the press and its coverage. Many have remarked that the president was himself a sort of frustrated journalist because he had such a sustained and rigorous interest in both media content and motivations of newspaper staff. As Levin notes in her Early biography, FDR had once harbored hopes of becoming a journalist himself. See Levin, The Making of FDR, 92. 48. “Confidential: Press Conference #25, Executive Offices of the White House, May 31st, 1933—­10.37 A.M.,” 315–­316, Press Conferences of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933–­1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/pc/pc0188.pdf. 49. “Confidential: Press Conference #156, Held in the President’s Study at Hyde Park, November 7, 1934, 1.10 P.M.,” 167, Press Conferences of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933–­1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/pc/pc0013​ .pdf. Questioners were often unidentified by stenographers. 50. “Confidential: Press Conference #452B (Off the Record Conference with Members of the Society of Newspaper Editors), Dining Room of the White House, April 21, 1938, 9.00 P.M.,” 362–­363, Press Conferences of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933–­1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/pc/pc0065.pdf.

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51. “Confidential: Press Conference #452B,” 363–­364. 52. John F. Sears, “Grassroots Democracy: FDR and the Land,” in FDR and the Environment, ed. Henry L. Henderson and David B. Woolner (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 13. 53. See Kaye Lanning Minchew, “Franklin D. Roosevelt in Georgia,” New Georgia Encyclopedia, last edited August 14, 2020, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia​ .org/articles/history-archaeology/franklin-d-roosevelt-georgia. 54. Sears, “Grassroots Democracy,” 14. 55. The key book about letters to Roosevelt remains Sussmann, Dear FDR. There were of course more formal and informal reports from the field that the administration relied on, since obviously the president had limits on travel. Among the most famous are those written by former journalist Lorena Hickok, who traveled the nation from 1933 through 1936 on behalf of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Both Hickok’s reports and correspondence are held by the FDR Presidential Library and Museum, as are those of her boss, Harry Hopkins. The finding guide for the Hickok papers is https://www.fdrlibrary.org/documents​ /356632/390886/findingaid_hickok.pdf/6711122c-e786-4706-922b-2cf21c​ 2c1af0 (accessed August 6, 2020). 56. A large number of speeches by both Long and Coughlin can be found online; listening to them is the only way to get a sense of how compelling they were. For a good sample of Long’s rhetoric, see https://www.youtube.com​/watch​ ?v=hphgHi6FD8k. For Coughlin in his prime, having turned against Roosevelt in 1936, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzLMRAz5G_4 (both accessed October 1, 2019). 57. There are a variety of outstanding books on Coughlin, but it is best to start with Michael Kazin’s work, which places the priest in the context of American populism: Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). See also Sheldon Marcus, Father Coughlin: The Tumultuous Life of the Priest of the Little Flower (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973); Donald Warren, Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, the Father of Hate Radio (New York: Free Press, 1996); Tona J. Hangen, Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion and Popular Culture in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982). 58. See his Share Our Wealth pamphlet, apparently published in 1934 and available at https://www.hueylong.com/resources/documents/share-our-wealth​ -pamphlet.pdf (accessed October 1, 2019). Long’s autobiography is Every Man a King: The Autobiography of Huey P. Long (1933; repr., Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964). See also Richard D. White Jr., Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long (New York: Random House, 2006). 59. White, Kingfish, 198. Roosevelt found Long to be so potentially dangerous that his assassination was likely a relief. Historian William E. Leuchtenburg notes: “[Rexford G.] Tugwell, one of the original members of the Brain Trust, has captured better than anyone Roosevelt’s own response to the death of his most troublesome rival: ‘I think he had really given Franklin concern for a bit. . . . It was not a happy circumstance that one of the most effective demagogues the country had ever known should be attacking with spectacular effect every move and every

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measure devised to meet the situation. It did get on Franklin’s nerves. He must have regarded Huey’s removal as something of a providential occurrence—­one more sign that he himself moved under a star.” From “FDR and the Kingfish,” American Heritage 36, no. 6 (October/November 1985), https://www.american​ heritage.com/fdr-and-kingfish (accessed October 1, 2019). 60. Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 297. 61. Before Roosevelt, presidential papers were not collected as part of federal government archives so they were often lost to history. On the opening of the FDR Library, see “FDR Dedicated the First Presidential Library,” Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.fdrlibrary.org/dedication (accessed October 1, 2019). 62. For early work on “speech acts,” the way that language is not only a description of the world, see J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975). 63. For a thoroughgoing review of presidential representation as well as current debates on the “unitary executive theory,” see John A. Dearborn, Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021). 64. Ernest Bormann, “The Rhetoric of Huey Long—­Radio Orator,” Journal of Radio Studies 4 (1997): 88–­111. 65. Phenomenology is a philosophical frame for understanding human thinking and behavior, focusing on how perceptions shape one’s reality. For an excellent primer and overview of the literature, see David Woodruff Smith, “Phenomenology,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2018 edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/phenomenology. 66. See Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt; Moley, After Seven Years, and what is still the central text on Roosevelt’s mail, Sussmann’s Dear Mr. President. Chapter 3 recounts the “court packing” public opinion debacle. 67. “FDR Dedicated the First Presidential Library.” 68. See Morton Keller, “James Bryce and America,” The Wilson Quarterly 12 (Autumn 1988): 86–­95. 69. James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1891). 70. Lincoln, “Public-­Opinion Baths,” in Lincoln on Democracy, ed. Mario Cuomo and Harold Holzer (New York: HarperCollins, 1990), 285. See also Harold Holzer, “Abraham Lincoln’s White House,” The White House Historical Association, https://www.whitehousehistory.org/abraham-lincolns-white-house (accessed December 19, 2019). Chapter Three

1. The literature across academic fields about citizenship is immense, but excellent places to begin are Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals: Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Judith Sklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); and Michael Schudson, The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life (New York: Free Press, 2011). 2. I don’t find any development of this term, but it was used recently by a few disparate writers on the internet in reference to the now-­departed Fox News

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commentator Glenn Beck or to Donald Trump. See for example Adrian Carrasquillo, “Top Bernie Backer Raul Grijalva to Campaign for Clinton for First Time in Nevada,” BuzzFeed News, July 15, 2016, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article​ /adriancarrasquillo/top-bernie-backer-raul-grijalva-to-campaign-for-clinton-for. 3. The notion that surveying the public brings it into being has been a largely academic debate since sociologist Herbert Blumer’s critique of 1948. After that a variety of scholars noted this, coming primarily from sociology. For a review, see Susan Herbst, Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), or Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive Public: How Mass Opinion Promotes State Power (New York: Basic Books, 1986). From the field of history, see Sarah Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); in the popular press, see Jill Lepore, “Politics and the New Machine: What the Turn from Polls to Data Science Means for Democracy,” New Yorker, November 8, 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/politics-and​ -the-new-machine. 4. Federalist No. 10, originally published in The New York Packet, November 23, 1787, https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist​ +Papers. 5. Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (New York: Penguin, 1960). The contemporary literature about public ignorance in politics and public policy is now large, with significant consensus about the low levels of information one finds. How much social scientists worry about the dearth of knowledge varies, ranging from significant concern to those researchers who believe citizens can operate effectively through heuristics and cues (e.g., learning on party identification to vote for politicians, even if one is uneducated about particular issues). It is useful to start with the famous contrast between scholars Philip Converse and Robert Lane in the 1960s and read forward from there. P. E. Converse, “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” in Ideology and Its Discontents, ed. David Apter (New York: Free Press, 1964), 206–­261; Robert Lane, Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does (New York: Free Press, 1962); Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Samuel L. Popkin, The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). For one contemporary study, see Arthur Lupia, Uninformed: Why People Know So Little about Politics and What We Can Do About It (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015) or this recent piece, which also includes references to many major works in the area: Brad R. Taylor, “The Psychological Foundations of Rational Ignorance: Biased Heuristics and Decision Costs,” July 9, 2019, SSRN, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3443280. In the popular press, an excellent exemplar of concern about political knowledge is Jeffrey Rosen, “America Is Living James Madison’s Nightmare,” The Atlantic, October 2018, https://www​ .theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10​/james-madison-mob-rule/568351/. 6. It is not fashionable in political science today to speak of “human nature,” something best left to psychologists. But in the long history of political writing and theory before the twentieth century it was common: theorists—­from Machiavelli and Hobbes up to Marx and Tönnies—­wrote freely about basic, universal human tendencies.

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7. Populism in its many forms has been studied extensively, and there are numerous general, cross-­period works as well as comparative studies focused on particular nations. See Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); Robert McMath, American Populism: A Social History, 1877–­1898 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992); Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961); Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); John Judis, The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2016). An excellent recent forum by scholars of populism is “What Is Populism Anyway?,” Boston Review, Fall 2019, https://mailchi.mp/bostonreview.net/reading_list_10_27_19?e=f548102381. 8. There is only one major biography of Lippmann, despite his influence: Ronald Steel’s magnificent Walter Lippmann and the American Century (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1980). The two Lippmann books I refer to are Public Opinion (1922; repr., New York: Free Press, 1965),and The Phantom Public (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1925). 9. Academics wrote about public opinion during this period, but their work was not popularized or known much beyond scholarly audiences. Examples are Arthur Bentley, The Process of Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1908), or A. V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England in the Nineteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1905). 10. Lippmann, Public Opinion, 48. 11. Lippmann, Public Opinion, 18. 12. Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, 213–­216. 13. The number of essays contrasting Lippmann and Dewey is substantial. The best place to start is Michael Schudson’s excellent essay about what they wrote, why the arguments became simplified and distorted over time, and what it all means for both scholarship and journalism: “The Public, the Media and the Limits of Democracy: Re-­examining the Lippmann-­Dewey ‘Debate,’” ABC Religion and Ethics, June 2019, https://www.abc.net.au/religion​/public​-media-and​ -limits​-of-democracy-the-lippmann-dewey-debate/11228168. 14. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (New York: Holt, 1927), and Dewey’s reviews of Lippmann’s Public Opinion, in The New Republic, May 3, 1922, 286–­288, and “Practical Democracy,” The New Republic, December 2, 1925, 52–­54. 15. On populism in Depression-­era popular culture—­film, radio, literature, photography, and song—­see Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009). Westerns with a rough but wise hero abound, of course, but two of the best—­representing Hollywood’s growing refinement of the genre—­are High Noon (1952) with Gary Cooper and later The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962) with John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. In the latter film, it is the uneducated but shrewd Wayne who saves the day, and not the intellectual–­turned–­US senator Jimmy Stewart. 16. An important point here is that while elite actors—­from presidents and pollsters to advertising executives and corporate leaders—­may have had a fairly dim view of citizen competence, intelligence, and capacity, those were notions

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best kept to themselves. Gallup seemed less cynical than his counterparts in the advertising and manufacturing worlds because he clearly had at least some genuine belief in democracy by the people. By contrast, the premier historian of corporate culture, advertising, and capitalism, Roland Marchand, has documented the extraordinary skepticism and disdain within the advertising industry. The fact is that advertising executives and public relations professionals in big cities like New York and Chicago thought little of the common person (particularly women), although they consistently produced advertisements celebrating the intuitive wisdom of the average person. Advertising is outside of my scope here, but see Marchand’s outstanding books, such as Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–­1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) and Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 17. This has become a substantial literature, but it is best to credit one of the earliest analysts of polling as an industry, Lindsay Rogers, writing in the 1940s. See Rogers, The Pollsters: Public Opinion, Politics and Democratic Leadership (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949). A few decades later David Moore picked up the thread and described the leaders of the young industry, focusing on major pollsters and their craft, through the 1980s: The Super Pollsters: How They Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1992). Jean Converse traces survey research methods in industry, academe, and government in Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence, 1890–­1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). More recently, see Amy Fried, Pathways to Polling: Crisis, Cooperation and the Making of Public Opinion Professions (New York: Routledge, 2012), and Igo, Averaged Americans. 18. Moore, The Super Pollsters. 19. “Gallup Says Measuring Public Opinion Opens New Political Reporting Field,” Editor and Publisher, November 14, 1936, 14. Susan Ohmer has written a fine book about Gallup’s early efforts and traces his work in the newspaper industry and polling, adding much to the literature about his time in Hollywood. See her George Gallup in Hollywood (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). 20. In Gallup’s “Testing Public Opinion,” Public Opinion Quarterly 2 (January 1938): 14. 21. George Gallup, “America Speaks: A National Weekly Poll of Opinion,” Washington Post: Weekly News Magazine, October 20, 1935, section III, 1. Katherine Bradshaw documents the “America Speaks” column, which appeared first with the October 20 edition. Thirty papers, at least, were clients of Gallup. “America Speaks” was a “package” that papers could use easily: it contained poll data about New Deal programs and broader issues—­the value of relief efforts, whether to fight in foreign wars, whether the Supreme Court should be limited in ruling legislation unconstitutional—­as well as charts, photographs, and interesting tidbits, such as the claims about Bryce and the aforementioned quote from Theodore Roosevelt. Editors could use what they wanted and some substituted their own photos or laid out results in formats that better served their papers. Yet the data were the key reason they paid for Gallup’s service. For an excellent analysis of “America Speaks,” see Katherine Bradshaw, “‘America Speaks’: George Gallup’s First Syndicated Public Opinion Poll,” Journalism History 31 (Winter 2006): 198–­205. It is not clear

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exactly how long “America Speaks” ran in different newspapers, but the name got dropped a few years later when it became “The Gallup Poll.” This is according to Sarah Van Allen of the Gallup Organization, who also noted to me that Dr. Gallup did not name his polling service “The Gallup Poll.” The media gave it that nomen­ clature, and Gallup would have likely preferred the formal name: American Insti­ tute of Public Opinion. Sarah Van Allen, personal correspondence with the author, October 14, 2019. The Gallup Organization was formed in 1958, subsuming the original American Institute of Public Opinion. 22. George Gallup and Saul Forbes Rae, The Pulse of Democracy: The Public-­ Opinion Poll and How It Works (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940). 23. Excerpt from Lippmann’s 1955 The Public Philosophy, reprinted in The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for a Liberal Democracy, ed. Clinton Rossiter and James Lare (New York: Random House, 1963), 88. 24. On quantification generally, see work by Ted Porter, in particular, The Rise of Statistical Thinking: 1820–­1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). See also Patricia Cline Cohen, A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). One might argue that the authority of numbers in political discourse has slipped (temporarily at least) with the recent rise of Donald Trump and the resistance of many Americans to facts and science. See Michael Patrick Lynch, Know-­It-­All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture (New York: Liveright, 2019). 25. There is no evidence the two men met or had a conversation, even if they addressed each other through their writing. They certainly did not stage any public debate that we can tell from recorded history, but juxtaposing them is productive. See Lepore, “Politics and the New Machine.” 26. Raymond Geuss, History and Illusion in Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). See Max Weber’s masterwork Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). The original, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, was published in 1922. 27. There are a variety of frameworks for understanding authority, but Geuss’s work well for studying politics. He argues that there are five general categories of authority, and one can hold more than one at a time. Also, the definitions overlap in many circumstances because no typology has precise categorical bounds. Two forms of authority not discussed here are de facto authority (gained through force, as with an occupying army) and a complex form he does not name but is akin to moral authority. See Geuss, History and Illusion in Politics, 37–­42. 28. The best recent book on expertise and how Americans have both honored it and struggled against it viciously is Tom Nichols’s outstanding The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 29. George Gallup, “Facts Are Gathered, Not Interpretations,” New York Herald Tribune, October 20, 1935, section II, 1. 30. Gallup uses the “small scale election” type language in many places, including the Washington Post on October 20 and October 27, 1935 (both in section III, p. 1). On October 27 he claimed that the “Poll Is Patterned after National Election” and noted support for this fact: “One indication of the impartiality of the polls is the impressive list of distinguished newspapers of all shades of edito-

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rial conviction now publishing the results. These papers differ markedly in their editorial attitudes on public questions, but they agree in believing their readers are entitled to the facts about public opinion.” 31. Geuss, History and Illusion in Politics, 37. 32. George Gallup, “New Kind of History Recorded in Surveys,” Washington Post, December 15, 1935, section III, 1. 33. Politicians, party bosses, and journalists had their critiques, doubting the practice of random sampling, the sorts of questions asked, and the competence of people to answer. There were also friendly criticisms of social scientists themselves, who noted the various flawed procedures and tried to help in the spirit of scientific progress in opinion measurement. See, for example, Lucien Warner, “The Reliability of Public Opinion Surveys,” Public Opinion Quarterly 3, no. 3 (July 1939): 376–­390. For sophisticated techniques to try and salvage data from 1935 through 1945 see Berinsky, “American Public Opinion in the 1930s and 1940s,” Public Opinion Quarterly 70, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 499–­529. 34. There were likely a few other issue and election polls, using more or less scientific methods, during the1930s. But those are lost to history if they existed or they were proprietary data so are not possible sources. Elmo Roper was a contemporary of Gallup’s, but his formal issue polling began a bit later and was done for Fortune. These early polls are collected by the Roper Center, and while some of the publicly available questions involve consumer behavior (e.g., cigarette smoking), most are much like those Gallup began asking a few years before. For example, in 1938, Roper asked respondents: “On the whole, do you approve or disapprove of President Roosevelt’s attitude toward labor unions?” (38 percent of respondents approved, 30 percent disapproved, 13 percent were not sure, and 18 percent did not know what labor unions were). https://ropercenter.cornell.edu​ /ipoll/study/31071900/questions#2101916c-6c14-46ad-9e14-82509204652c (accessed November 6, 2019; access to all data is restricted to Roper Center members). 35. This and all poll questions cited in this chapter are available through the Roper Center and can be located through a date or keyword search (https://roper​ center.cornell.edu). As with many of Gallup’s questions during this period, there was no chance for respondents to answer either “Don’t know” or “no opinion,” which is obviously problematic. 36. Sample sizes varied but they were typically in the thousands, far larger than today’s polls, due to advances in sampling and the switch to telephone and internet. See Kathleen Weldon and William Block, “Metadata Improvements on Historical Polling at the Roper Center,” April 29, 2020, https://zenodo.org​/record​ /3775617#.YAby3cVKhOg. 37. There are of course ballot measures and other mechanisms for direct citizen input on policy matters in different states. The rules on these vary greatly; about half of American states have referenda or initiative statutes. See https://​ballotpedia​ .org​/States_with_initiative_or_referendum (accessed November 6, 2019). 38. The “imperial presidency” was a term coined by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in The Imperial Presidency (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1973). Schlesinger argued that President Richard Nixon had stretched the limits of presidential power. His exploitation of the office was thought to have been contained by the threat of

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impeachment, which led to his resignation. Legislation by Congress in the 1970s, after Nixon’s unrestrained behavior, has largely gone unheeded by subsequent presidents, who were able to work around restraints. See Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer, “Have We Had Enough of the Imperial Presidency Yet?,” New York Times, January 9, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/opinion/president-trump-bor​ der​-wall-weak.html. 39. All presidential approval polls by Gallup, as well as all other polls in this chapter, can be accessed at the Roper Center by keyword, restraining the search to the 1930s filter provided: https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/presidential​-approval (accessed November 6, 2019). 40. See the methodology and data at Gallup’s Presidential Approval Ratings website: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245606/update-gallup-presidential-approval​ -ratings.aspx (accessed February 1, 2020). For a recent review of unitary ­executive theory and its history, see Jeffrey Crouch, Mark Rozell, and Mitchel Sollenberger, “The Law: The Unitary Executive Theory and President Donald J. Trump,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 47 (September 2017): 561–­573. 41. For some good introductions to the issues, see Elizabeth Fussell, “Warmth of the Welcome: Attitudes toward Immigrants and Immigration Policy,” Annual Review of Sociology 40 (July 2014): 479–­498; and Taeku Lee and Sunmin Kim, “The Mechanics of Immigration Polls,” Public Opinion Quarterly 82, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 148–­170. 42. I have separated and numerated response categories for ease of reading, but this is the text used by Roper. 43. Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–­1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 44. The poem “Character of the Happy Warrior” was first published by William Wordsworth in 1807, and the phrase has been used by many politicians since. See the poem at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45512/character-of-the​ -happy-warrior (accessed February 1, 2020). 45. Gallup, “America Speaks,” B1. 46. Gallup and Rae, The Pulse of Democracy, 272. 47. Rossiter and Lare, The Essential Lippmann, 98. 48. Susan Herbst, “Illustrator, American Icon, and Public Opinion Theorist: Norman Rockwell in Democracy,” Political Communication 21, no. 1 (2004): 1–­25; Susan Herbst, “Public Opinion Infrastructures: Meanings, Measures and Media,” Political Communication 18, no. 4 (2001): 451–­464. Chapter Four

1. On the printing press, see Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 2. See the elegant introduction to historical perspectives and practices by Sarah Maza, Thinking about History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). 3. The media studies literature about entertainment is of course enormous, but a good recent overview is now in its eleventh edition: Richard Campbell, Christopher Martin, and Bettina Fabos, Media & Culture: Mass Communication in a Digital Age (New York: Bedford, 2017). Media effects are the result of programming content but also, scholars have argued, of their form. The latter are most often called

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“technological” theories. Marshall McLuhan remains the boldest technological determinist in media studies, though he spawned many strains of thought, from the popular work of Neil Postman to more recent and more sophisticated understandings of publics and audiences. McLuhan is notoriously dense and nonlinear, but his general argument is most clear in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1964). Postman’s is not the only technological argument about the effects of mass media or the ways they can trivialize political matters; he draws heavily on the work of Canadian theorists Harold Innis and McLuhan. See Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin, 2005). For a more subtle approach based in sociological context, see Richard Butsch, The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics, and Individuals (New York: Routledge, 2007). 4. See James Poniewozik, Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America (New York: Liveright, 2019). 5. On the fanfare of nineteenth-­century political campaigns, see Jon Grinspan, The Virgin Vote: How Young Americans Made Democracy Social, Politics Personal, and Voting Popular in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), or Gil Troy, See How They Ran: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate (New York: Free Press, 1991). Critiques of Postman’s determinist approach are numerous, including Tommi Hiokkala, Ossi Roahkonen, Christoffer Tigerstedt, and Jussi Tuormaa, “Wait a Minute, Mr. Postman! Some Critical Remarks on Neil Postman’s Childhood Theory,” Acta Sociologica 30, no. 1 (1987): 87–­99. 6. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death. 7. This oversight is odd, at least to scholars of media. One good discussion is Donna Lee Halper, “Neil Postman’s Missing Critique: A Media Ecology Analysis of Early Radio 1920–­1935” (PhD diss., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2011), https:// scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article​=1372&context=open_access​ _dissertations. 8. Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 9. Arthur Chandler, “Exposition of the Second Republic,” http://www.arthur​ chandler.com/1849-expo (accessed November 19, 2019). 10. See “The Crystal Palace of Hyde Park,” https://web.archive.org/web​ /20120312125040/http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~struct/resources/case_studies​ /case_studies_simplebeams/paxton_palace/paxton_palace.html (accessed November 20, 2019). After the fair the building was moved to another section of London but burned to the ground in a fire in 1936. 11. See George Wagstaffe Yapp, ed., Official Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851 (London: Spicer Brothers, 1851), 190–­191. 12. “Guide to the New York Crystal Palace Records,” New York Historical Society Museum and Library, http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/nyhs/nyccrystalpalace​ /bioghist.html (accessed November 20, 2019). 13. The Art Institute of Chicago opened in 1893 for the Exposition, but it was not on the fairgrounds. 14. Robert W. Rydell, “World’s Columbian Exposition,” Encyclopedia of ­Chicago, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1386.html (accessed Novem­ ber 20, 2019). A good bibliographic start to studying the Columbian exposition

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is on the website of the Field Museum, https://libguides.fieldmuseum.org/c.php​ ?g=540236&p=3699369 (accessed November 20, 2019). 15. Lenox Riley Lohr, Fair Management: The Story of a Century of Progress Exposition (Chicago: The Cuneo Press, 1952). For an extensive review of the entire fair, with photos of all the major exhibits, see the Official Guide: Book of the Fair (Chicago: A Century of Progress, 1933). Two critical books for understanding the 1933 fair, its goals, architecture, and meaning, are Lisa D. Schrenk, Building a Century of Progress: The Architecture of Chicago’s 1933–­1934 World’s Fair (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), and Robert W. Rydell, World of Fairs: The Century-­of-­Progress Expositions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). The replica of a human body, “Transparent Man,” still exists and can be seen at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. See https://sharing.mayoclinic​.org/2018/03/09​ /mayo-clinic-flashback-1933-introducing-transparent-man/. 16. J. Parker Van Zandt and L. Rohe Walter, “King Customer,” Review of Reviews 90 (September 1934): 24. 17. Van Zandt and Walter, “King Customer,” 26. 18. David Rhodes and Daniel Stelter, “How Automakers Accelerated Out of the Great Depression,” Boston Consulting Group, February 16, 2010, https://www​ .bcg.com/publications/2010/growth-automakers-accelerated-out-great-depres​ sion.aspx. 19. Rydell has produced many fine books and a variety of articles, among them World of Fairs, and All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). An early, interesting article on race and the 1933 fair is August Meier and Eliott Rudwick, “Negro Protest at the Chicago World’s Fair, 1933–­1934,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908–­1984) 59 (Summer 1966): 161–­171. 20. Michael Mullen, “New York 1939–­1940: New York World’s Fair,” in Historical Dictionary of World’s Fairs and Expositions, 1851–­1988, ed. John Findling and Kimberly Pelle (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990), 293–­300. 21. Warren I. Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Smithsonian Books, 2003), 214. For an appreciation of Susman’s project see Paul V. Murphy, “The Last Progressive Historian: Warren Susman and American Cultural History,” Modern Intellectual History 14, no. 3 (2017): 807–­835. 22. Thomas G. Lannon, “The Records of the Fair Itself,” in “World’s Fair: Enter the World of Tomorrow.” This essay is part of a set of essays compiled by curators at the New York Public Library. The site is called Biblion: The Boundless Library, located at https://wayback.archive-it.org/11788/20200108160937/http:// exhibitions​.nypl​.org/biblion/worldsfair/stacks-fair-comes-nypl/essay/essay-lannon​ -records (accessed November 25, 2019). 23. Grover Whalen, Mr. New York: The Autobiography of Grover A. Whalen (New York: Putnam, 1955), 199. 24. Seating in Radio City in the 1930s is about what it is today. See Luke Fiederer, “AD Classics: Trylon and Perisphere/Harrison and Fouilhoux,” Arch Daily, https://www.archdaily.com/800746/ad-classics-trylon-and-perisphere-harrison​ -and-fouilhoux (accessed August 14, 2020). 25. The most comprehensive source on exhibits, including photos, renderings, and advertisements, is Frank Monaghan, Official Guide Book of the New York

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World’s Fair, 1939 (New York: Exhibition Publishers, 1939), https://catalog​ .hathitrust.org/Record/000007747. 26. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 506–­507. 27. Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 416. 28. Robert W. Rydell, “The Fan Dance of Science: American World’s Fairs in the Great Depression,” Isis 76, no. 4 (December 1985): 535. 29. Peter J. Kuznick, “Losing the World of Tomorrow: The Battle over the Presentation of Science at the 1939 New York World’s Fair,” American Quarterly 46, no. 3 (September 1994): 360. See also, on scientific dynamics in the period preceding the Chicago and New York fairs, Ronald C. Tobey, The American Ideology of National Science, 1919–­1930 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971). 30. Rydell, “The Fan Dance of Science,” 540. 31. Kuznick, “Losing the World of Tomorrow,” 366. 32. Scores of premature infants were cared for at the fair during both summer seasons. It was all under the direction of Dr. Martin A. Couney, experienced physician-­entrepreneur-­showman of the period, who had displayed his infant care technology in previous years, in Berlin, Coney Island, and other fair locales. Babies at the New York fair were taken care of by fifteen nurses and five wet nurses. All fairgoers could marvel over the tiny babies, neatly displayed in incubators and closely monitored. See William Silverman, “Incubator-­Baby Side Shows,” Pediatrics 64, no. 2 (August 1979): 127–­141. An important and honest document, produced years after the 1939 fair, laid out the successes and challenges of the fair, particularly with regard to finance: Ed Tyng, Making a World’s Fair (New York: Vantage Press, 1958). 33. The program that visitors to Democracity heard was narrated by H. V. Kaltenborn, the most famous news voice of the period, who worked for CBS and NBC radio networks over the course of his long career on the air. Many today know him primarily for his role playing himself in Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) as he narrates the scenes of Senator Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart) in the midst of his dramatic and exhausting filibuster on the Senate floor. The film is in the public domain: https://archive.org/details/MrSmithGoesToWashington1939480x360. 34. On the train design, see “20th Century Limited Steamliner Debuts,” American Experience, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/grandcentral​ -streamliner/. See also Russell Flinchman, Henry Dreyfuss, Industrial Designer: The Man in the Brown Suit (New York: Rizzoli, 1997). 35. Gilbert Seldes, Your World of Tomorrow (New York: Rogers-­Kellogg-­Stilson, 1939). For reasons that are not clear, the booklet copies I was able to find have more than a few typographical errors and dropped letters, in addition to the stylistic decision to use a tremendous number of ellipses. I replicate these where readable, but inserted dropped letters for readability. None of these additions altered the meaning of words or sentences. 36. Seldes, Your World of Tomorrow. 37. Seldes, Your World of Tomorrow, 12. The pages are not numbered by the pamphlet’s printer, but this is where the quote can be found. 38. Seldes, Your World of Tomorrow, 9. 39. Charles Stevenson, “Labor Takes in the Fair,” Atlantic Monthly 165 (January 1940): 1.

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40. The conflict around labor at the World’s Fair is oddly understudied, given its complexity and import for understanding union history as well as the massive workforce of the fair. An excellent article is Daniel Hart London, “Outside the World of Tomorrow: New York Labor and the Public Sphere in the 1939–­1940 New York World’s Fair,” Journal of Urban History 40, no. 6 (November 1, 2014): 1011–­1027. 41. “Job Discrimination at N.Y. World’s Fair Hit,” The Crisis (April 1939): 116. 42. Bruce D. McClung, “Music, Race, and the Theme Center,” in “World’s Fair: Enter the World of Tomorrow,” Biblion: The Boundless Library, https:// wayback.archive-it.org/11788/20200108140225/http://exhibitions.nypl.org​ /biblion/worldsfair/beacon-idealism-building-democracity/essay/essay-mcclung​ -music (accessed January 23, 2021). 43. Paul Mason Fotsch, “The Building of a Superhighway Future at the New York World’s Fair,” Cultural Critique 48 (Spring 2001): 65–­97. 44. Amanda Murray created an excellent short film in 2013, and some of the interviewees recall the experience of the 1939 fair. It can be found at https:// viewing.nyc/world-fair-a-documentary-about-the-1939-new-york-worlds-fair-in​ cluding-vintage-footage/ (accessed January 12, 2020). Fair organizers and merchants produced such an astounding amount of memorabilia that many artifacts are still available from antique collectors. Dealers’ websites are interesting, and by far the best place to see the array of souvenirs, many that are bizarre and innovative relative to what exists in a small permanent exhibit at the Queens Museum (on the site of the World’s Fair). The Kan-­O-­Seat, a combination of cane and foldout chair that aided weary fairgoers, is one example of the many items fairgoers could buy: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-1939-New-York-World-s​ -Fair-Kan-O-Seat-Chair-Walking-Cane-Combo-Souvenir-/264932751004 (accessed January 25, 2021). Another contemporary collector has gathered the many handkerchiefs from the fair, and they are extraordinary artifacts: https://handkerchief​ heroes.com/1939-new-york-worlds-fair/ (both sites accessed December 6, 2019). 45. The Soviets’ effort was their own counterpoint “world of tomorrow,” a communistic view of the same future described by so many American architects who built the US industrial exhibits. See Anthony Swift, “The Soviet World of Tomorrow at the New York World’s Fair,” The Russian Review 57, no. 3 (July 1998): 364–­379. 46. Description of the “American Common,” April 28, 1940, Box 760, Folder 11, New York World’s Fair Collection, New York Public Library, New York. 47. See Marco Duranti, “Utopia, Nostalgia and World War at the 1939–­1940 New York World’s Fair,” Journal of Contemporary History 41 (2006): 663–­683. 48. The 1939 capsule contains objects that fair organizers thought would be of great interest in the year 6939, the year that the capsule should be opened. In it are a lengthy essay about cultural, political, and technological aspects of life in the 1930s; fabrics and metal samples; American currency; books, magazines, and photographs; household appliances, toys, and sports equipment; and many other items. Chapter Five

1. As odd as it sounds today, writers and politicians commonly distinguished between “good” and “bad” propaganda in the 1930s. Which print or broadcast

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material fell into which category was in the eye of the beholder, but they generally placed the European dictators’ speech into the “bad” category. The word “propaganda” was sometimes used with a wink for American public relations and advertising, but it was benign, not dangerous. 2. One outstanding scholarly resource on implicit bias is the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. See http:// kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/research/understanding-implicit-bias/ (accessed August 14, 2020). 3. I could not find consistent polls from the 1930s in the Roper Center database asking about a respondent’s eligibility to vote or their citizenship status, although there were occasional questions about where the respondent was born or where their father was born. Sometimes respondents were asked if they were registered or whether they had voted in a previous election, but there was no consistent screening for citizenship. 4. While his focus is somewhat different than my own, the historian David Goodman has written an extraordinary book about radio in the 1930s, describing the tensions of radio as a means to entertain as well as educate the public. He makes a strong argument about the ways that radio tried to educate Americans on public matters and encouraged “active listening,” even though most people think of radio’s Golden Age primarily in terms of entertainment. Especially interesting were the networks’ collaborations with academics, which were meant to spark thinking and conversation. One example was Lyman Bryson’s CBS program The People’s Platform, which ran from 1938 through 1952. For this show, four guests of varying backgrounds were served dinner in the CBS studios and had an unrehearsed discussion of public affairs that sought to model the rewards of interesting dialogue and conversation in daily life. See Goodman, Radio’s Civic Ambition: American Broadcasting and Democracy in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 5. On the cultural history of automobiles in the 1920s and subsequent decades, see Cotton Seller, Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Katherine Parkin, Women at the Wheel: A Century of Buying, Driving, and Fixing Cars (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). 6. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1930–­1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 7. Calvin Coolidge, “First Annual Message,” December 6, 1923, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual​-mes​ sage-20. When Coolidge spoke, the only significant restriction to immigration was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Extreme in its mandate, the act effectively cut off all immigration from China. 8. Immigration patterns were complex and discrimination was not a uniform matter, as evidenced by the Asian exclusion. Mexicans, for example, were excluded from the restrictions due to American industry’s need for low-­cost labor. For a detailed discussion of the quotas as well as the broader treatment of immigrants from each category, see Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991). 9. Aristide Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 243.

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10. See Sarah Ogilvie and Scott Miller, Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006). 11. See Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Vintage Books, 2011); Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Migration and How It Changed America (New York: Vintage Books, 1992); James Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 12. Marshall Curry has directed a documentary about the New York Bund rally called A Night at the Garden, released and reviewed in 2017: https://vimeo​ .com/237489146. See also Ryan Bort, “When Nazis Took Over Madison Square Garden,” Rolling Stone, February 19, 2019, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics​ /politics-news/madison-square-garden-nazis-796197/. 13. Gallup asked only occasional questions about refugees, and Jews in particular, despite a massive number of polls conducted on so many other matters from 1935 onward. Gallup’s first question about refugees was put to an American sample in 1938 when he asked, “Should we allow a larger number of Jewish exiles from Germany to come to the United States to live?” Twenty-­one percent of respondents replied “yes,” 72 percent replied “no,” and 7 percent had no opinion. The only poll that called out multiple groups, although it didn’t specify immigration or religion, was conducted by the Roper Organization in 1938, which queried people about their “friendly” feelings toward “foreign people,” namely Germans, the British, Swedes, the French, Russians, the Japanese, Finns, and Italians. The most unfriendly feelings were reserved for the Germans and the Japanese. Both polls are in the iPoll database of the Roper Center. The first was conducted by Gallup on November 24–­29, 1938, and included 1,500 adults. The second was conducted by the Roper Organization from November 1–­30, 1938, and included 5,171 in-­person interviews with adult Americans. See the Roper Center archives, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ipoll/study/31087123/questions#93e2f3d1​ -96ba-47bb-867b-6e6172c2a24d and https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ipoll/search​ ?collection=LSM&end=1938-12-01&q=British&start=1938-11-01 (both accessed January 9, 2020). 14. James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (London: Macmillan and Co., 1891), 726. 15. Wendy L. Wall, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Wall’s book is required reading for anyone interested in the evolution of ideas about American identity in the twentieth century. She parses the different efforts tugging at the meanings and potential meanings of Americanism by surveying various activities of social justice advocates, companies, and advertisers, along with government officials, religious leaders, and intellectuals. 16. Wall, Inventing the “American Way,” 17. 17. Gilbert Seldes, The Great Audience (New York: Viking Press, 1950), 105. Seldes had also written copy for the New York World’s Fair, as noted previously. 18. David Woolner, “Oil, Jobs, and the Environment—­A New Deal Solution to the Spill?,” Grist, June 15, 2010, https://grist.org/article/2010-06-14-oil-jobs​ -and-the-environment-a-new-deal-solution-to-the-spill/. 19. Half of the twenty-­six episodes of Americans All—­Immigrants All are accessible online at the WNYC website, thanks to the archivist there: https://www.wnyc​

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.org/series/americans-all-immigrants-all (accessed February 10, 2020). All scripts are archived at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, New York, NY. 20. This is the short version of a long story; the production was a complex undertaking with public and private partners. There were disagreements about scope and approach, which are captured in the correspondence of Rachel Davis DuBois archived at the University of Minnesota, records of government agencies, and the like. Without question, the most incisive and gripping analysis of the program’s origin is “Americans All, Immigrants All: Cultural Pluralism and Americanness,” the first chapter of Barbara Dianne Savage’s groundbreaking book Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938–­1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 21–­62. There is no equivalent discussion, but a few scholars have explored the nature of Americans All—­Immigrants All. A thesis on the topic is Nicholas Montalto’s doctoral dissertation “The Forgotten Dream: A History of the Intercultural Education Movement, 1924–­1941” (University of Minnesota, 1977), chapter 6. Montalto includes the 25,000 brochure figure and details funding. See also Dan Shiffman, “A Standard for the Wise and Honest: The ‘Americans All . . . Immigrants All’ Radio Broadcasts,” Studies in Popular Culture 19, no. 1 (October 1996): 99–­107; Diana Selig, Americans All: The Cultural Gifts Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965); Robert Fleeger, “Forget All Differences until the Forces of Freedom Are Triumphant: The World War II–­Era Quest for Ethnic and Religious Tolerance,” Journal of American Ethnic History 27, no. 2 (Winter 2008): 59–­84. 21. Nicholas V. Montalto, A History of the Intercultural Education Movement, 1924–­1941 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1982). 22. Savage, “Americans All, Immigrants All.” 23. Although Savage’s book focuses on all aspects of radio and African Americans, she spends time discussing Jews; the AJC was investing in the series and this likely gave their ideas and concerns more weight than most other groups could muster. Debate about the good and bad of Jewish portrayals in the media continued into the 1940s around Elia Kazan’s Academy Award–­winning Gentleman’s Agreement (1947). In the film, Gregory Peck portrays a journalist who takes on a Jewish identity in order to research antisemitism in New York and Connecticut elites and business circles. That a non-­Jew, Peck’s character, is the one who makes change (and not a Jew) is a notable dated aspect of the film. But it does serve as a fine example of the Jewish struggle between pride on the one hand and hopes for seamless assimilation into America on the other, two conceptions that did not always fit together comfortably in the mid-­twentieth century. 24. Radio Guide, December 10, 1938, 8–­9. 25. Radio Guide, December 10, 1938, 9. 26. Savage, Broadcasting Freedom, 25–­26. 27. Americans All—­Immigrants All (Washington, DC: United States Department of the Interior, Office of Education, 1939), https://archive.org/details/american​sal​ limmi00unit/page/2 (accessed January 13, 2020). 28. Savage, Broadcasting Freedom, 49. In his recent book, historian Jon Meacham notes that Roosevelt had to make a choice between saving Jewish refugees and winning the 1940 election, after which he would have the freedom to pursue less popular foreign policy goals. Yet many scholars and subsequent generations of Jews see

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FDR’s noninterventions before and during the war (when he might have bombed the tracks to death camps) as reflective of a clear antisemitism. See Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (New York: Random House, 2018). For one recent discussion, see Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). 29. Morris J. Jones wrote the manual, but it likely went through many hands and iterations, as an official government document, keyed to the twenty-­six-­ episode series and distributed to American teachers and community leader on request: Americans All—­Immigrants All: A Handbook for Listeners (Washington, DC: Federal Radio Education Committee, 1939). For the section on “The Negro,” see pages 37–­40. 30. Since the listening guide lacked proper citation of writers throughout, we might assume this refers to the Irish historian William Edward Hartpole Lecky, who wrote on British history in the late nineteenth century. For the section on Jews, see Jones, Americans All—­Immigrants All, 62–­65. 31. There is no readily available listing of which actors played which roles throughout the series, if such records exist, but many sound like white, nonimmigrant Americans using accents, often quite poorly, a surprise given the general high level of professionalism evident in the series writing, planning, and execution. 32. “Who Was Shut Out? Immigration Quotas from 1925–­1927,” History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5078 (accessed January 14, 2020). The data on this site are from the Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1929), 100. 33. Savage, Broadcasting Freedom, 26. 34. The map was created to accompany Frank P. Sargent, Annual Report of the Commissioner-­General of Immigration for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1903 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1903). It was republished on the website of JF Ptak Science Books: https://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebook​ store/2014/09/jf-a-full-zoomable-version-can-be-found-at-michigan-state-univer​ sity-library-here-race-and-occupation-of-immigrants.html (accessed February 13, 2020). 35. Likely the most obvious illustration of underlying agendas is the way world maps normally place North America and Europe “on top,” something that geographers point to as a deeply Eurocentric, ideological decision that impacts the ways we think about the power and import of nations in Asia, South America, Australia, and Africa. 36. Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Crown, 1988). 37. Jeanette Sayre Smith, An Analysis of the Radiobroadcasting Activities of Federal Agencies (Cambridge, MA: Radio Broadcasting Research Project, Littauer Center, Harvard University, 1941), 90. 38. Stanley High, “Not-­So-­Free Air,” Saturday Evening Post, February 11, 1939, 9. 39. Smith, An Analysis of the Radiobroadcasting Activities, 28. 40. Savage, Broadcasting Freedom, 55. 41. See Dorothea Seelye, “Broadcasting Tolerance to the Tolerant: Americans All—­Immigrants All” (master’s thesis, American University, Washington, DC, 1941). Lazarsfeld was a founder of media research and a prolific writer. See Hynek Jerabek, “Selected Bibliography of Paul Lazarsfeld’s Most Important Works,”

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International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 13, no. 3 (2001): 322–­325. On opinion leaders, see Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz, Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communication (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1955). Debate about Lazarsfeld’s relationship with the radio industry continues. In particular, he is accused of minimizing evidence of radio’s effects to help the industry avoid more stringent government regulation. Some of this is discussed in Hanno Hardt, Critical Communication Studies: Essays on Communication, History and Theory in America (New York: Routledge, 1992). Lazarsfeld focused on reinforcing the effects of media, which were generally opposed to “massive effects” hypotheses. For a review of various approaches to reinforcement, see Michael D. Slater, “Reinforcing Spirals: The Mutual Influence of Media Selectivity and Media Effects and Their Impact on Individual Behavior and Social Identity,” Communication Theory 17, no. 3 (August 2007): 281–­303. 42. Seelye, “Broadcasting Tolerance to the Tolerant,” 55. 43. Seelye, “Broadcasting Tolerance to the Tolerant,” 55. 44. Seelye, “Broadcasting Tolerance to the Tolerant,” 56. 45. Seelye, “Broadcasting Tolerance to the Tolerant,” 56. 46. Seelye, “Broadcasting Tolerance to the Tolerant,” 71. 47. Seelye, “Broadcasting Tolerance to the Tolerant,” 72. 48. The 1924 act excluded Mexicans and other groups immigrating within the Western Hemisphere. There were a variety of reasons for this, but primarily their labor was badly needed by farmers in the American Southwest. Farmers lobbied to keep the flow of Mexicans up because they were viewed as outstanding workers, willing to do all that was needed on farms without much complaint. Also, given the proximity of their home country, their immigration into the United States was not seen as irreversible because they could easily return or be forced back; no vast ocean or arduous obstacles kept them in the United States, relative to their European, African, or Asian immigrants. 49. Episode 16, 7, scripts of Americans All—­Immigrants All, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, New York, NY. 50. For a discussion of these distinctions, the challenges to them, and an application to the Populist Party in the late nineteenth century, see Joseph Gerteis and Alyssa Goolsby, “Nationalism in America: The Case of the Populist Movement,” Theory and Society 34, no. 2 (April 2005): 197–­225. 51. By the time Al Smith became governor the Irish had risen in their status, no longer quite so low on the social ladder, no longer “black.” See the now-­classic book by Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995). 52. Herbert Blumer, “Public Opinion and Public Opinion Polling, “American Sociological Review 13 (October 1948): 544. See also Harvey Glickman, “Viewing Public Opinion in Politics: A Common Sense Approach,” Public Opinion Quarterly 23, no. 4 (Winter 1959–­1960): 495–­504. Chapter Six

1. In the massive Library of Congress collection of the Federal Writers Project oral histories and documents one can peruse personal narratives: American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1940, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/federal-writers-project​/about​

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-this​-collection/ (accessed February 22, 2020). But the classic work is still Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970). See also Robert S. McElvaine, ed., Down and Out in the Great ­Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008). 2. This recent volume covers a tremendous amount of ground with regard to the development of Hollywood during the Great Depression, the financial turns in the industry, and the nature of star power and director control: Iwan Morgan and Philip John Davies, eds., Hollywood and the Great Depression: American Film, Politics and Society in the 1930s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016). 3. Robert E. Snyder, “Huey Long and the Presidential Election of 1936,” Louisiana History 16, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 117–­143. 4. See Paul Heike, The Myths That Made America: An Introduction to American Studies (London: Transcript Verlag, 2014), https://www.transcript-publishing​ .com/978-3-8376-1485-5/the-myths-that-made-america/. The most thoroughgoing analysis of practicality and the “self-­made man” are chapters 9 and 10 of Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-­intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1962). He traces the roots of the idea and how it became manifest throughout the United States, particularly in the rejection of liberal arts education in favor of more practical forms of higher education in particular. See also Jeffrey Louis Decker, Made in America: Self-­Styled Success from Horatio Alger to Oprah Winfrey (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); and Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism and Other Writings, ed. Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells (New York: Penguin Books, 2002). 5. This is a brief but delightful essay on the three visitors to America most often cited as having keen insight into the roots of our institution, fantasies, and societal myths. See Arvid Brodersen, “Themes in the Interpretation of America by Prominent Visitors from Abroad,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 295 (September 1954): 21–­32. 6. I don’t address it here because of the extensive attention it has received, but it is important to note that Bill Wilson, along with friends and clergy, started Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in the mid-­1930s. AA is of course one of the most ­important global self-­help movements of all time, sparking many other similar ef­ forts to help those with addictive behavior. The “bible” of AA was and still is Alcoholics Anonymous, published in 1939. Often called the “Big Book,” it contains the enduring essentials of the movement, including the famous steps to understanding ones’ problems. Alcoholics Anonymous World Service still holds the copyright. See http://www.nassauny-aa.org/Docs/WhatIsAAWS.html. On the history of AA, see https://www.aa.org/pages/en_US/historical-data-the-birth-of-aa-and​ -its-growth-in-the-uscanada (both accessed December 9, 2019). For a biography of the movement’s primary founder, see Susan Cheever, My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson; His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous (New York: Washington Square Press, 2004). 7. This is not to discount the tremendous importance of novels, which have received the attention of many of our best literary critics over the decades. Many spoke directly to the human suffering of the period from a variety of political standpoints. See Peter Conn, The American 1930s: A Literary History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

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8. Michael Korda, Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller 1900–­1999 (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2001), x–­xi. 9. Jacobson, You Must Relax: A Practical Method of Reducing the Strains of Modern Living (New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1934). Adjacent to the growing field of psychology so greatly influenced by Freud was the powerful attraction of anthropology, enabling rudimentary cross-­cultural studies that focused on “primitive” minds. Recall from chapter 5 that work by Franz Boas, a modern founder of American anthropology, was used in background research by Rachel Davis DuBois for Americans All—­Immigrants All. 10. William Kremer, “The Man Who Invented Relaxation,” BBC Magazine, November 4, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34714591. 11. Jacobson, You Must Relax, 6–­7. 12. Walter B. Pitkin, Life Begins at Forty (New York: Whittlesey House, 1932), 172–­173. 13. Joanna Scutts has written a wonderful biography of Marjorie Hillis, placing her in the context of New York literary and social circles but also fitting her into the context of an evolving American feminism. She was influential in her time, and Scutts’s book is required reading for anyone interested in women, work, and identity in the mid-­twentieth century. See Scutts, The Extra Woman: How Marjorie Hillis Led a Generation of Women to Live Alone and Like It (New York: Liveright, 2018). 14. Although I don’t analyze it here, Live Alone and Like It is a feminist manifesto of sorts that, unlike Orchids on Your Budget, resonates fairly well with our twenty-­first-­century American mind-­set. Not only does Hillis gleefully go through the pleasures of making your own schedule, doing the work you want, and having the social circle you choose based solely on your own preferences, she makes single life sound like a proactive stance, not simply the result of widowhood or divorce. She artfully avoids writing about sex but implies that you can get what you need while still living alone. Be a joiner and all else will work out: “[If you have no contacts in a new city] there are always businesswomen’s organizations, dancing classes, literary courses, political clubs, churches, Y.W.C.A.’s, poetry groups, bridge lessons, musical circles, skating clubs, riding-­classes, college-­extension courses, and what-­not. Be a Communist, a stamp collector, or a Ladies’ Aid worker if you must, but for heaven’s sake, be something. When you are something, do something about it. Pick out your logical prey, and pounce” (40). 15. Marjorie Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget: Or Live Smartly on What You Have (Indianapolis: Bobbs-­Merrill, 1937), 10–­13. 16. Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget, 160. 17. Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget, 160. 18. Brande, Wake Up and Live! (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936), 80. 19. Joanna Scutts, “Fascist Sympathies: On Dorothea Brande,” The Nation, September 2–­9, 2013, https://www.thenation.com/article/fascist-sympathies-doro​ thea​-brande/. 20. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936; repr., New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), 105. 21. Stephen L. Recken, “Fitting-­In: The Redefinition of Success in the 1930s,” Journal of Popular Culture 27, no. 3 (Winter 1993): 205–­222. Fitting in was of course a major, if not the major, theme in American advertising of the period as companies sought to help the public avoid bad breath, unstylish clothing, the

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wrong décor, or the many other lifestyle decisions we make that can go horribly wrong. See Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–­1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). Marchand argues that Carnegie’s work is a fine example of how first impressions matter and will determine the course of relationships, whether with a boss or the opposite sex. And it was the advertising of the period that enabled one to make a stellar first impression. As Marchand notes, “Ads with such leading questions as ‘Do you know how to be yourself?’ and ‘Can a woman change a man’s idea of her personality?’ had explained how a perfume or nail polish might resolve a woman’s identity crisis. . . . [Advertisers] stepped forward as personal counselors on how to meet the scrutiny of judgmental others and how to succeed ‘by looking the part’” (216). 22. Hofstadter, Anti-­intellectualism in American Life, 252. 23. See Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, and Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business (Berkley: University of California Press, 1998). See the archive of images at https://marchand.dss.ucdavis.edu/ (accessed February 26, 2020). A list of other archives with advertisements from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be found at the Walsh University website, http://libanswers​.walsh​ .edu/faq/147803 (accessed February 26, 2020). 24. For popular essays on isolation and radicalization, see Madeline Roache, “This Researcher Juggled Five Different Identities to Go Undercover with Far-­ Right and Islamist Extremists. Here’s What She Found,” Time, February 18, 2020, https://time​.com/5785779/extremist-networks-julia-ebner/; and Annie Kelly, “Who Goes Alt-­Right in a Lockdown?,” New York Times, April 7, 2020, https://www​ .nytimes​.com/2020/04/07/opinion/coronavirus-isolation-radicalization.html, and this interesting FBI website directed to teenagers: “Why Do People Become Violent Extremists?,” https://cve.fbi.gov/why/. Chapter Seven

1. Theory and research about “mass society” exploded in the early decades of the twentieth century. Scholars pursued the notion of how an undifferentiated mass of citizens might be persuaded, inspired, agitated, and silenced, from psychoanalytic, sociological, and Marxian perspectives. The notion became increasingly important with the rise of Germany and authoritarianism in Europe and the proliferation of radio. One influential German refugee scholar, Emil Lederer, was among the earliest sociologists linking economics, sociology, politics, and war. See Emil Lederer, The Threat of the Classless Society (New York: W. W. Norton, 1940). 2. Marisa Meltzer, This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World (And Me) (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2020). 3. Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017). 4. Inaugural Address by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., January 20, 2021, https:// www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/01/20​/inaugural​ -address-by-president-joseph-r-biden-jr/. 5. The number of articles and broadcast discussions on the worthlessness and death of polling is astounding, especially in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. For a sample see Lisa Lerer, “‘I Don’t Have a Happy Ending’: A Pollster on

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What Went Wrong,” New York Times, November 11, 2020, https://www​.nytimes​ .com/2020/11/11/us/politics/polls-election-pollster-interview.html. 6. Molly Worthen, “Is There Such a Thing as an Authoritarian Voter?,” New York Times, December 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/opinion​ /sunday/trump-authoritarian-voters-political-science.html. 7. There are only a few sustained models that attempt to link conversation, debate, opinion measurement, and practical social action. One project that has yielded success is the “deliberative poll”; its founder is James S. Fishkin at Stanford University. See his Democracy When People Are Thinking: Revitalizing Our Politics through Public Deliberation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). A key Hannah Arendt text is The Human Condition, originally published in 1958. See the second edition, edited by Margaret Canovan and Danielle Allen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). 8. “Fix This Democracy—­Now: 38 Ideas for Repairing Our Badly Broken Civic Life,” Washington Post, October 26, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost​ .com​/graphics​/2017/lifestyle/magazine/how-to-fix-american-democracy/. 9. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry ­(Chicago: Gateway Books, 1946), 184. 10. One of the better pleas for the liberal arts as a route to civic engagement comes from philosopher Danielle Allen, and those of us searching for practical tools would do well to start with her inspirational essay “What Is Education For?,” Boston Review, May 9, 2016, http://bostonreview.net/forum/danielle​-allen-what-education. 11. Most widely adopted textbooks have similar content, even if presented differently. That said, there are some worrying differences these days in coverage of controversial subjects, depending on whether the book is required in conservative or liberal states. These need to be monitored closely and exposed. See Dana Goldstein, “Two States. Eight Textbooks. Two American Stories,” New York Times, January 12, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/12/us/texas​-vs​ -california-history-textbooks.html. 12. This is an outstanding review and discussion of the many different approaches to civic education. It is required reading for anyone who would like a schematic of this incredibly rich field because it organizes disparate strands of research across disciplines and nations. See Jack Crittenden and Peter Levine, “Civic Education,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2018 edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/civic-education/. 13. See Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 50th Anniversary Edition, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018). 14. See the Center for Media Literacy (https://www.medialit.org/educator​ -resources), the National Association for Media Literacy Education (https://namle​ .net/), or Be Internet Awesome (https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/en​_us/) for grades as low as the seventh (all accessed March 6, 2020). 15. See FactCheck (https://www.factcheck.org/), the Poynter Institute’s Politifact (https://www.poynter.org/tag/politifact/), and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/) (all accessed March 6, 2020). 16. The website for the Columbia Journalism Review is https://www.cjr.org​/the​ _media_today/researchers-fake-news-exaggerated.php, and the website for the Nieman Journalism Lab is https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/01/rated-false​-heres-the​

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-most-interesting-new-research-on-fake-news-and-fact-checking/ ­(accessed March 6, 2020). 17. See the Common Sense Education website at https://www.commonsense​ .org/education/digital-citizenship (accessed March 6, 2020). 18. It is impossible to list all of the great programs now easily accessed, but to focus on high school and college students here, one premier example of outstanding public affairs podcast discussion is The Weeds, produced by Vox, a liberal media platform, at https://www.vox.com/pages/podcasts (accessed March 7, 2020). From a conservative journalist, a good program is The Remnant by Jonah Goldberg at https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-review-2/the-remnant​ -with-jonah-goldberg (accessed March 9, 2020). One of the best podcasts has been created by Charlie Sykes, a moderate conservative talk show host and thinker, at https://podcast.thebulwark.com/ (accessed March 9, 2020). In the legal arena—­critical high-­profile court cases in the Supreme Court and federal courts, as well as activities of the US Department of Justice—­see The Lawfare Podcast, supported by the Brookings Institution, at https://www.lawfareblog​ .com/topic/lawfare-podcast (accessed March 9, 2020). Also excellent in this category is a discussion podcast by former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, produced by New York Public Radio, Stay Tuned with Preet, at https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/preetbharara (accessed March 9, 2020). 19. See Eric J. Oliver and Thomas J. Wood, Enchanted America: How Intuition and Reason Divide Our Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). Richard Hofstadter’s essay first appeared in 1965 and is included in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964). Recently some social scientists dove deeper into conspiratorial beliefs to see just how many people held them. Their work is a relief in that the numbers are not quite as great as we might have thought but are still quite worrisome. See Scott Clifford, Yongkwang Kim, and Brian W. Sullivan, “An Improved Question Format for Measuring Conspiracy Beliefs,” Public Opinion Quarterly 83, no. 4 (Winter 2019): 690–­722. 20. Our tendency toward “selective exposure” when it comes to media is well known. Research demonstrating it has become increasingly sophisticated, but the scholarly paradigm is as old as the field of media studies itself. See Paul F. ­Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948). Another classic is Joseph T. Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication (New York: Free Press, 1960). 21. See the Debate It Forward website at https://www.debateitforward.org​/ about (accessed March 7, 2020). For evaluation of debate teaching techniques in the classroom, and a compendium of methods for pedagogy across grades and student interest areas, see the project on Activity Based Learning (ABLConnect), created by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, at https://ablconnect.harvard.edu/debate-research (accessed March 7, 2020). 22. See Leah Bassel, The Politics of Listening: Possibilities and Challenges for Democratic Life (London: Palgrave, 2017). A recent popular book by a thoughtful journalist is Kate Murphy, You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters (New York: Celedon Books, 2020). In the context of classroom debate, see Ruth

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Kennedy, “In-­Class Debates: Fertile Ground for Active Learning and the Cultivation of Critical Thinking and Oral Communication Skills,” International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 19 (2007): 183–­190. 23. The most recent edition is the fourth. See Phil Meyer, Precision Journalism: A Reporter’s Introduction to Social Science Methods (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). An excellent brief article about the problematics of Silver’s approach, from both social science and journalistic standpoints, is Benjamin Toff, “The ‘Nate Silver Effect’ Is Changing Journalism. Is That Good?,” Politico, Oc­ tober 5, 2017, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/05​/nate​-sil​ ver-effect-journalism-polling-five-thirty-eight-215683. 24. The premier place for journalists to find guidelines for poll reporting were created by the American Association for Public Opinion Research. See resources at https://www.aapor.org/Education-Resources/For-Media/Questions-to-Ask-When​ -Writing-About-Polls.aspx (accessed March 7, 2020). 25. These journalists argued for eliminating “person on the street” interviewing as a practice: Elise Czajkowski, “It’s Time to Retire the Man on the Street,” News-­ to-­Table, March 28, 2019, https://medium.com/news-to-table/kill-the-man-on-the​ -street-cb49278a5d82; Edward Schumacher-­Matos, “Election 2: To Kill the ‘Man on the Street,’” NPR, November 1, 2012, https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor​ /2012/11/01/164107070/election-2-to-kill-the-man-on-the-street; Ross Barkan, “Switching Sides,” Columbia Journalism Review, Winter 2019, https://www.cjr​ .org​/special_report/switching-sides.php. In one example, the Society of Professional Journalists warns against “person on the street” interviews on same-­sex marriage on their website: “What’s in a Name? Reporting on the Same-­Sex Marriage Debate,” November 6, 2006, https://www.spj.org/divws5.asp. This is an appropriate place to mention one of our premier journalists, Tim Alberta, who is an expert on how to interview and get to know citizens in order to enlighten us about public opinion. See this particularly good article: “20 Americans Who Explain the 2020 Election,” Politico, December 13, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/13​ /letter-to-washington-20-americans-explain-2020-election-433756. 26. When I read Oliver and Wood’s book Enchanted America on “magical thinking” among Trump supporters and others on the right, it struck me that the authors provide journalists with guidance that might improve reporters’ questioning. Survey data like those in the book outline particular conspiracies so that reporters can use them as a guide to on-­air interviews. 27. “Thick Description” is anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s paradigm for understanding people in their context. It has been profoundly influential across the social sciences and humanities, and it is an underutilized way to think about reporting (or studying) public opinion: “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3–­30. From recent sociology, see Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New York: New Press, 2018), or Ruth Braunstein, Prophets and Patriots: Faith in Democracy across the Political Divide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017). In political science, see work by Kathy Cramer, such as The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).

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28. Rosen has been a leading public intellectual, but to keep up with his work, follow him on Twitter (@jayrosen_nyu) or see his blog Press Think at https://pressthink.org/ (accessed January 24, 2021). See also the Membership Puzzle Project, a practical approach to involving communities in journalism, at https://membershippuzzle.org/ (accessed January 24, 2021). 29. One might argue that it is fine and indeed appropriate to place all African Americans in a single category if a great majority of them lean Democratic. It might be the case in a particular election, but what if other characteristics led them to lean this way besides racial identity? If we have any curiosity about our fellow citizens whatsoever, we’ll want to see intragroup diversity that exists. 30. There was a huge number of news articles and editorials throughout the fall of 2019 and the winter of 2020 about whether a woman could win the 2020 general election. An example of this hand-­wringing was Lisa Lerer and Susan Chira, “‘There’s a Real Tension’: Democrats Puzzle over Whether a Woman Will Beat Trump,” New York Times, January 5, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/us/politics​ /women-candidates-president-2020.html?auth=login-email&login=email. While there are some replications and elaborations, the original research article on third-­ person effect is W. Phillips Davison, “The Third-­Person Effect in Communication,” Public Opinion Quarterly 47, no. 1 (Spring 1983): 1–­15. 31. Calvin Coolidge, “Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington D.C.,” January 17, 1925, The American Presidency Project, https:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-american​-society-newspaper​ -editors-washington-dc. 32. For a general overview of CSR, see Benedict Sheehy, “Defining CSR: Problems and Solutions,” Journal of Business Ethics 131 (2015): 625–­648, https://doi​ .org/10.1007/s10551-014-2281-x. 33. See their volunteer work site, for example, at https://starbucks.volunteer​ match​.org/ (accessed March 11, 2020). 34. Matt Stevens, “Starbucks C.E.O. Apologizes after Arrests of 2 Black Men,” New York Times, April 15, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/us/star​ bucks-philadelphia-black-men-arrest.html. 35. Bill Chappell, “Starbucks Closes More than 8,000 Stores Today for Racial Bias Training,” NPR, May 29, 2018, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo​ -way/2018/05/29/615119351/starbucks-closes-more-than-8–000-stores-today​ -for-racial-bias-training. See also Shep Hyken, “Starbucks Closes 8,000 Stores for Racial Bias Training—­Is It Enough?,” Forbes, June 1, 2018, https://www.forbes​.com​ /sites/shephyken/2018/06/01/starbucks-closes-8000-stores-for-racial-bias​-train​ ing-is-it-enough/#176bddc52831. 36. The University of Pittsburgh has gathered many of the useful CSR sites at https://pitt.libguides.com/csr/websites (accessed March 11, 2020). 37. Another example of Starbucks’ attempt to stir public discourse is of course their cup designs and quotes. Not a trivial matter at all, even if some media mock it. See Rachel Sugar, “How Starbucks’s Annual Holiday Cup Became a Battleground for the Heart and Soul of America,” Vox, November 2, 2018, https:// www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/2/18052550/starbucks-holiday​-cup​-explained​ -2018-controversies. 38. It has become impossible to list all of the outstanding books reflecting on the nature of democracy and the urgency of exploring it in the age of Trump.

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Among the best are Lawrence Lessing, They Don’t Represent Us (New York: William Morrow, 2019); Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017); David Runciman, How Democracy Ends (New York: Basic Books, 2017); Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York: Avid Reader Press, 2020); Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Crown, 2018); Adam Przeworski, Crises of Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019); and Nolan McCarty, Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). 39. J. L. Austin, “Performing Speech,” in The Discourse Studies Reader: Main Currents in Theory and Analysis, ed. Johannes Angermuller, Dominique Maingueneau and Ruth Wodak (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2014), 56.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and tables. Abbott, Berenice, 8 action civics (Crittenden and Levine), 226 Adams, James Truslow, 159 advertising and consumerism, 6, 121, 161, 208–9, 269n21 African Americans, portrayal of in Americans All—Immigrants All, 162–65, 169, 175, 190–91 agency. See self-help movement and the Depression Albert, Prince, 122 Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), 34, 268n6 Aldrich, Winthrop, 138 Allport, Gordon W., 47–48 alternative universe questions, 102–3 American Commonwealth, The (Bryce), 5, 75, 95 American Federation of Labor, 142–43, 184 American Institute of Public Opinion, 92, 98–99. See also Gallup Organization American Jewish Committee (AJC), 164, 168, 175, 178 American Nazi party, 14 American Psychological Association, 155 Americans All—Immigrants All (radio program), 31–33, 152–92, 171, 217–18, 223; elite reception of program, 177–79; immigrants as others, publics, and public opinion, 183–92; as intercultural education, 153, 161–65, 177, 189; listener reception of program, 180–82; listing of episodes, 167; mapping of

immigrant America, 173–77, 174; nativism and immigrants, 154–61; portrayal of African Americans, 32–33, 162–65, 169, 175, 181, 182, 183, 190–91; portrayal of Asian immigrants, 187–89; portrayal of Jews, 32, 162–65, 168, 169–70, 175, 190–91; portrayal of Native Americans, 174–75, 176; portrayal of “Near Eastern People,” 170–72 “America Speaks” (Gallup), 106, 111, 255n21 Amos ‘n’ Andy (radio show), 38, 118, 161 Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, 228 anti-immigrant sentiment, 160; during 1930s, 155–56, 161; Bryce on, 159; in polling questions, 111; and Seldes world’s fair narrative, 185; Trump bolstering of, 218. See also Americans All—Immigrants All (radio program); Chinese Exclusion Act (1882); JohnsonReed Act (1924) anti-intellectualism: during 1930s, 116, 224; Carnegie themes of, 205, 207; as characterizing the public, 18, 19, 78; drawbacks of, 20–22; within US world’s fairs, 219 Anti-intellectualism in American Life (Hofstadter), 20–21 antisemitism: during 1930s, 158, 175; in polling biases, 108–9; and US refugee policy, 157. See also Coughlin, Charles, “Radio Priest”

[294]

index

Arendt, Hannah, 221, 225 Art Institute of Chicago, 123 Asians, portrayal of in Americans All— Immigrants All, 187 authoritarianism: and American-style fascist groups, 158; Gallup on polling as defense against, 94, 113; international threats of, 11–13, 14; in present-day trends, 39 automobile industry, at world’s fairs, 125 Babson, Roger, 10 Bel Geddes, Norman, 149 Berinsky, Adam, 101 Bernays, Edward, 138 biases: in journalism, 233–35; in polling, 101, 105, 107–11, 110 Biden, Joseph, 39, 215 Big Tech, 220, 222–23 Bingham, George Caleb, 119, 120 birth of a public, 1–36; during 1930s, 7–14; drawbacks of anti-intellectualism, 20–22; methodology, 23–25, 249n36; sociology of knowledge, 14–20, 242n21 Black Lives Matter movement, 218–19 Blumer, Herbert, 191 Boas, Franz, 168–69 Bourke-White, Margaret, 8 Brande, Dorothea, 203–4, 205, 209 Bryce, James: The American Commonwealth, 5, 75, 95; on democracy and public opinion, 4–5; on drive to succeed as priority over political engagement, 195–96, 205, 207; on Johnson-Reed Act, 159; as observer of American democracy, 83–84; steps in public opinion development, 75 Butler, Smedley, 12 Cantril, Hadley, 47–48 Capra, Frank, 7, 11, 32, 118 Carnegie, Dale, 206; How to Win Friends and Influence People, 10, 34, 197, 203–4, 205; lack of address to structural/economic matters, 205, 213; writing for everyman/woman as shaper of the public, 208, 209

Carnegie Foundation, 164, 178 Carver, George Washington, 186 Center for Media Literacy, 227 Chicago Exposition (1893), 122–23 Chicago World’s Fair (1933): attendance levels, 117; “A Century of Progress” theme, 30, 123, 132; Hall of Science, 123, 132; “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Adapts” motto, 123, 134; study of, 125 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 188 citizen competence: Lippmann’s concerns over, 81, 90, 91, 112–13; and poll question formats, 100–105; and populism, 84–86; and reification of the public, 86–91, 112–13 civic nationalism vs. ethnic nationalism, 190–91 civics education, 224–30 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 67, 70, 162 Civil Rights Act (1964), 218 clairvoyant questions, 102 Clinton, Hillary, 24 Cohen, Lizabeth, 112 Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), as sponsor of Americans All—Immigrants All: address of racial prejudice in, 153; concerns about profitability, 177; support for program, 32, 153, 163–64, 165, 189; wins national award for original programming, 179–80. See also Americans All—Immigrants All (radio program) Columbia Journalism Review, 228 Common Sense Education, 228 conspiratorial thinking: Hofstadter on paranoid style, 13, 20, 228–29; spread on internet, 13; as threat to democracy, 35 consumer culture, 6 Converse, Philip, 24 Coolidge, Calvin, 155, 207, 235 Copeland, Aaron, 144 corporate leaders, influence on national dialogues, 35 corporate social responsibility (CSR), 235–37



Coughlin, Charles, “Radio Priest”: FCC cancellation of program, 69, 179; nativist-themed use of radio during Depression, 9, 11, 31, 135–36, 157, 161; as social constructivist, 72–73 County Election, The (painting), 119, 120 Cowie, Jefferson, 10 Crittenden, Jack, 226 Crossley, Archibald, 27, 84, 91, 96 Crystal Palace, 29, 122 cyber warfare, 39 Daughters of the American Revolution, 164 Debate It Forward, 229–30 de jure authority, 98, 99 Democracity. See New York World’s Fair (1939) democracy: and citizen competence, 84–91, 100–105, 112–13; fears of collapse of, 45–46; founders of, 19, 82–83, 243n24; Gallup on polling as enhancement of, 94; impact of policies of Big Tech on, 220, 222–23; Lippmann on public opinion and, 86–89; and quality public opinion, 221–24; role of civics education, 224–30; treatment of at US world’s fairs, 213. See also anti-immigrant sentiment; antisemitism; racism Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 5 Dewey, John, 81, 89–90, 178, 223–24, 227, 233 Dick Tracy comics, 118 digital literacy, 227–28 Dirksen, Everett, 179 Dow Jones Industrial Average, 41 Dreyfuss, Henry, 136–37, 139 drought, 42, 43 DuBois, Rachel Davis: as advocate of social justice, 177; concerns about stereotyping of minority groups, 169, 172, 175, 183, 185, 187–89; as leader of intercultural education movement, 162–64, 217, 223; research used in Americans All—Immigrants All program, 166; work with Studebaker, 178 Du Bois, W. E. B., 164

index

[295]

Early, Stephen, 62–63, 62, 64, 68 economic rights, 10 Editor and Publisher (magazine), 92 educators, influence on national dialogues, 35 Einstein, Albert, 128, 131, 133, 186 election prediction: during 2016/2020 presidential elections, 24, 216; use of Gallup polling data for, 52–53, 54, 92, 94, 241n3 Electoral College, 82 Enchanted America (Oliver and Wood), 229 entertainment media studies, 118, 258n3 epistemic authority, 97–99 ethnic nationalism vs. civic nationalism, 190–91 ethnographic interviews, 232–33 eugenics movement, 155 Evans, Walker, 8 Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations (1853), 122 Exposition des Produits de L’industrie Française (1798), 121 expositions. See world’s fairs, as infotainment; specific world’s fairs fact-check websites, 228 “Facts Are Gathered, Not Interpretations” (Gallup), 98–99 fake news, academic research on, 228 false dualities, in polling, 103 Farley, James, 52, 74 fear vs. optimism: within American culture, 10–13; in New Deal era, 42 Federal Art Project (WPA): Drought (Kainen), 22 Federal Communications Commission, 179 Federal Emergency Relief Administration, 46 Federalist Papers, 82–83 Federal Writers’ Project (WPA), 8, 241n5 felt experience of a decade (Katznelson), 10–11, 34 Fitzpatrick, James, 178–79 Floyd, George, 218–19 Flushing Meadows Park, New York, 126

[296]

index

focus groups, 232–33 folk models, 56–57 Fortune (magazine), 105, 110 Fouilhoux, J. André, 130, 136 Fox News, 24–25 Franklin, Benjamin, 195 Fraser, James Earle, 131 Freire, Paulo, 226 Freud, Sigmund, 204, 209 frozen conflicts (Skinner), 16 Gabrilowitsch, Ossip, 186 Gallup, George H., 93; epistemic authority of, 97–99; Lippmann’s critique of polling, 95–96; misguided approach to polling, 216–17; natural/ charismatic authority of, 99–100; new way of populism, 80, 81, 91–96; sales misrepresentations by, 112; sample surveys, 72; writings of, 27–28, 92, 94, 95, 98–99, 100, 106, 111, 255n21 Gallup Organization: data for election prediction, 52–53, 54, 241n3; how poll questions shape a public, 100–111; questions about refugees and Jews, 264n13; as shaper of the public, 84, 111–15; treatment of immigrants, 189 Gallup Presidential Approval Poll, 103–5 Geertz, Clifford, 233, 273n27 German American Bund rally (1939), 158 Geuss, Raymond, 98, 99, 256n27 Golden Age of Radio, 29, 38, 117, 121. See also radio Gone with the Wind (Mitchell), 118 Great Depression: and 1929 stock market crash, 41; economic impacts of, 41–43; legacy of, 8–9, 9, 15, 22; unemployment rate, 37. See also selfhelp movement and the Depression Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, London (1851), 29, 122 Great Migration, 158, 174 greenwashing, 236 “Guesswork Eliminated in New Method for Determining Reader Interest” (Gallup), 92

Harrison, Wallace, 130, 136 hate groups, 39 Heider, Fritz, 56 Hillis, Marjorie: emphasis on material achievement, 208; erasure of class lines, 209; feminist themes of, 269nn13–14; lack of address to structural/economic matters, 205, 213; Live Alone and Like It, 201, 269n14; Orchids on Your Budget, 10, 201, 203 Hitler, Adolf, 31, 47, 120, 179 Hofstadter, Richard: on American business orientation, 207–8; Antiintellectualism in American Life, 20–21; as historian, 242n13; on New Deal sensibility, 10; on paranoid style in American politics, 13, 20, 228–29; on populist history as conspiracy statements, 84 Holcombe, Arthur, 53 Holli, Melvin, 54 Hollywood, 90, 117–18, 121, 154, 160, 175 Hoover, Herbert, 41, 43–44, 158 Horatio Alger–style mythology, 33, 193. See also self-help movement and the Depression Hovgaard, William, 186 How to Win Friends and Influence People (Carnegie), 10, 34, 197, 203–4, 205 Hurja, Emil, 25, 51–52, 53, 54, 55 Ickes, Harold, 168 immigration policies, federal, 154–55, 156, 157, 168, 265n28 imperial presidency questions, 103–5 implicit bias, 153 implicit theories, in psychology, 56 infotainment: explanation of, 119–21; origins in 1930s, 29; radio as, 7, 31–33; world’s fairs as, 121–24, 208, 213. See also specific world’s fairs intercultural education, 32–33. See also Americans All—Immigrants All (radio program) Inventing the “American Way” (Wall), 14



Jackson, Andrew, 59, 84, 175 Jacobson, Edmund, 10, 198–99, 199, 209 Jefferson, Thomas, 19 Jews, portrayal of in Americans All— Immigrants All, 162–65, 168, 169–70, 190–91 Johnson-Reed Act (1924): Bryce on, 159; narrative of need for, 167–68; quotas for immigrant groups, 155–57, 156, 172, 184, 267n48 journalism and journalists: coverage of world’s fairs, 126; FDR’s relationship with, 215–16; influence on national dialogues, 35; need for within-group diversity knowledge, 233–35, 274n29; third-person effect, 234; Trump’s relationship with, 215–16; use of polling data by, 96, 99, 100, 113, 230 Kainen, Jacob, 22 Kammen, Michael, 131–32 Katznelson, Ira, 10–11, 34–35, 42 Korda, Michael, 197–98 Ku Klux Klan, 14, 154 Kuznick, Peter J., 133, 134 La Guardia, Fiorello, 127 Landon, Alf, 92, 94 Lange, Dorothea, 8 Latting Observatory, New York, 122 lay theories, defined, 56–57 Lazarsfeld, Paul F., 48, 180–81, 266n41 Le Bon, Gustave, 83, 86 Levine, Lawrence W., 8, 43 Levine, Peter, 226 liberation pedagogy (Freire), 226 Life Begins at Forty (Pitkin), 200–201 Limbaugh, Rush, 24 Lincoln, Abraham, 77 Lindbergh, Charles, 186 Lippmann, Walter, 87; concerns over citizen competence, 81, 90, 91, 112–13; critique of polling, 95–96, 191; dismissal of by Gallup, 95; The Phantom Public, 88–89; on public opinion, 86–89, 114; Public Opinion, 86–88, 89 Literary Digest, The, 54, 84, 92, 94, 99–100, 111

index

[297]

Live Alone and Like It (Hillis), 201, 269n14 Locke, John, 60 Lohr, Lenox R., 123 Long, Huey “Kingfish”: comparison of Trump to, 222; as demagogic leader, 11; FDR’s views on dangers of, 251n59; political use of radio during Depression, 31; Share Our Wealth movement, 69–70, 195; as social constructivist, 72–73 Madison, James, 82–83, 86 magical thinking, 21–22, 244n27 Ma Joad (Steinbeck character), 4–5, 6, 7 Making a New Deal (Cohen), 112 maps, as social constructions, 173–74 Marchand, Roland, 154, 208–9 market research, 27 Mayer, Louis B., 175 Maza, Sarah, 15 McCormack, John, 12 McCormick, Anne O’Hare, 49 McGill, Earle, 171 McKinley, William, 119–20 McLuhan, Marshall, 48–49 Meacham, Jon, 11–12, 265n28 media content, study of, 24–25 Meet John Doe (film), 7, 32 Mellett, Lowell, 59–60 Meltzer, Marisa, 214 Merton, Robert K., 48 Meyer, Phil, 230 Miller, Ola Babcock, 92 Mitchell, Margaret, 118 Montalto, Nicholas V., 164, 165 Moore, David, 91–92 “more or less” questions, 103 Morgenthau, Henry, 138 Moses, Robert, 140 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (film), 7, 32 MS St. Louis, 157, 168 Mullen, Michael, 126 Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, 123 Mussolini, Benito, 31 NAACP, 143 Napoleon III, 121

[298]

index

narcotizing dysfunction (Merton and Lazarsfeld), 48 National Association for Media Literacy Education, 227 National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 162–63, 165 National Research Council, 123 Native Americans, portrayal of in Americans All—Immigrants All, 174–75, 176 nativism. See Americans All—Immigrants All (radio program); Coughlin, Charles, “Radio Priest” natural/charismatic authority, 98, 99–100 Nazi Germany, 22, 146, 147, 158, 190 “Near Eastern People,” portrayal of in Americans All—Immigrants All, 170–72 New Deal, 8, 11, 25, 31, 140, 142; Congressman Fitzpatrick’s opposition to, 178; failure of programs, 63; FDR’s framing of, 40, 57, 77; Hofstadter on, 10; Hoover’s opposition to, 44; legacy of, 38. See also specific programs “New Kind of History Recorded in Surveys” (Gallup), 100 New Republic, The, 86 New York Public Library, 148 New York World’s Fair (1939), as shaper of the public, 23, 29–31, 116–51, 129, 145, 202, 219; attendance levels, 117; challenge of fairground science, 123–24, 132–35; “For Peace and Freedom” motto, 148; General Motors Pavilion, 128–29, 145–46, 149; history of world’s fairs, 29–30; as infotainment, 119–21, 219–20; Perisphere and Democracity, 128, 130, 135–44, 139–40, 150; public space and American Common, 144–51; Soviet Union fair pavilion, 146; Trylon, 128, 130, 131, 140; “The World of Tomorrow” theme, 30, 124–32, 135, 147; world’s fairs as spectacles, 121–24 New York World’s Fair (1964): Unisphere, 148 Nieman Journalism Lab, 228 Nineteenth Amendment, 154 Noguchi, Hideyo, 186

Oliver, J. Eric, 229 Orchids on Your Budget (Hillis), 10, 201, 203 “Orientals.” See Asians, portrayal of in Americans All—Immigrants All paranoid style in American politics (Hofstadter), 13, 20, 228–29 People’s Party, 84, 184, 222 Perkins, Charles Elliott, 208 “person on the street” interviews, 231–32, 273n25 Phantom Public, The (Lippmann), 88–89 Pierce, Franklin, 122 Pitkin, Walter B., 200–201 podcasting, 228 polling and pollsters, 97; during 1930s, 18–19, 101–11; of 1939 fairgoers, 30–31; during 2016/2020 presidential elections, 24; aggregation-oriented approaches to, 28–29, 217; biases in, 101, 105, 107–11, 110; Blumer on, 191; challenges of, 72; Gallup on, 27–28; limitations of, 34; Lippmann on, 90, 191; quota sampling, 92; social desirability effects, 105, 107. See also specific pollsters pollsters, populism and citizenship, 26–29, 79–115; the founders, Lord Bryce, and public opinion, 82–84; Gallup’s claims of authority, 96–100; Gallup’s new way of populism, 91–96; how poll questions shape a public, 100–111; Lippmann, Dewey, and phantom publics, 86–91; populism and citizen competence, 84–91; the public the pollsters built, 111–15 popular culture, 25. See also Hollywood; New York World’s Fair (1939); radio populism: during 1890s, 84; during 1930s, 158; and citizen competence, 84–86; Gallup’s new way of, 91–96; in present-day trends, 39. See also pollsters, populism and citizenship; specific populists populist hero paradigm, 90, 254n15 Postman, Neil, 120 Poynter Institute, 228



Precision Journalism (Meyer), 230 presidential libraries, 71, 74 Psychology of Radio, The (Cantril and Allport), 47–48 public, fictional, 3 Public and Its Problems, The (Dewey), 89, 223–24 Public Opinion (Lippmann), 86–88, 89 public opinion and ways forward, 35, 212–38; challenges and remedies, 227; corporations and publics, 235–38; democracy and quality public opinion, 221–24; historical lens, 214–20; journalism and political discourse, 230–35; role of civics education, 224–30 public opinion baths (Lincoln), 77 public opinion development steps (Bryce), 75 public opinion industry, 52–55, 85–86. See also specific pollsters Public Opinion Quarterly, 92 Publisher’s Weekly, 197–98 Pulse of Democracy, The (Gallup and Rae), 27–28, 94, 95 quota sampling, 92 racial and ethnic biases, in polling, 105, 107–11, 110, 218 racism: during 1930s, 158–59; antiChinese sentiment, 188; implicit bias, 153; Starbucks employee racial bias training, 236–37; and world’s fair themes, 143–44, 149–51, 219. See also Americans All—Immigrants All (radio program) radio: early years of, 23, 38, 47–49, 76, 160–61, 244n38; FDR’s use of, 31, 32, 38, 47–52, 49, 60, 179, 215; as infotainment source, 7, 31–33; as medium of inspiration, 9; opposition of newspapers to, 247n21; ownership rate in United States, 32; regulation of, 179; Seldes on importance of, 160–61; world’s fairs broadcasts, 126. See also specific programs Radio Education Project (WPA), 162, 178–79

index

[299]

Radio Guide (magazine), 165, 179–80 Radio Priest. See Coughlin, Charles, “Radio Priest” Rae, Saul, 27–28, 94, 95 rags-to-riches narrative, 33, 195. See also self-help movement and the Depression Rand, Sally, 123 Ratner, Victor, 160 Rauchway, Eric, 44 Reagan, Ronald, 78 Recken, Steven L., 205 redlining, 176 Riefenstahl, Leni, 120 Roche, Josephine, 163 Rockefeller, Nelson, 138 Roosevelt, Franklin D. (FDR), as public opinion theorist, 6, 7, 9, 11, 37–78, 79–80, 104, 205; belief in educable and rational public, 56–60, 85; campaigns and early presidency, 43–46; establishment of library for, 71, 74, 75; events leading to stock market crash, 40–43; letters received from the public, 47–48, 50–51, 59, 68, 72, 73–74, 246n19; Oglethorpe University speech, 58; opened 1939 World’s Fair on television, 29, 131; populists as demagogues, 68–71; Prohibition speech, 58–59; public as newspaper victims, 65–68; and public opinion industry, 52–55; as public opinion theorist, 25–26, 39–40, 71–75; refugee/ immigrant policies, 157, 168, 265n28; relationship with the press, 52, 60–64, 215–16, 250n46; as shaper of the public, 38–39, 52, 64, 75–78, 114; use of polling data, 31, 40, 51–52, 54–55; use of radio, 31, 32, 38, 47–52, 49, 60, 179, 215; and “Wall Street Putsch,” 12 Roosevelt, Theodore “Teddy,” 44, 61, 184 Roper, Elmo, 27, 28, 84, 91, 96 Roper Organization: background on issue polling by, 101, 257n34; how poll questions shape a public, 107–11, 264n13; reported data via Fortune magazine, 105, 110; treatment of immigrants, 189

[300]

index

Rosen, Jay, 233 Rosenman, Sam, 64 Rosten, Leo C., 61–62 Rural Electrification Administration, 67 Rydell, Robert W., 125, 132–33, 134 Salomon, Haym, 170 Sandburg, Carl, 7 Sarnoff, David, 138 Savage, Barbara Dianne, 164–65, 166, 173 Sax, Adolphe, 121 Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 46, 57 Scopes Monkey Trial, 20 Scutts, Joanna, 204 Sears, John F., 67, 68 Seelye, Dorothea, 180–81, 182 Seldes, Gilbert: on importance of radio, 160–61; as writer for New York World’s Fair, 137, 163, 164, 166, 169, 171, 185, 186 Selective Training and Service Act (1940), 60 self-help movement and the Depression, 193–211; best-selling books and films, 10–11, 33–34, 196–208; hope and individual betterment, 194–97; integration of psychology in, 208–11; Katznelson on felt experience of period, 34–35; origins in 1930s, 7, 9–10, 33–35 self-reliance, 42–43. See also self-help movement and the Depression Selznick, Lewis J., 175 Service Bureau for Intercultural Education, 162 shame, 43 Share Our Wealth movement (Long), 70, 195 Silver, Nate, 230 Skinner, Quentin, 15–16 Skowronek, Stephen, 38, 71 Smith, Al, 158, 190 Smith, Ira R. T., 50–51 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (1930), 41–42 Snyder, Timothy, 22, 215 social construction of public opinion, 40

social guidebooks. See self-help movement and the Depression social media bubbles, 219, 222–23, 229 sociology of knowledge, 14–20, 37, 242n21 Soviet Union fair pavilion (1939), 146 Standard Oil, 124 Stanford, Leland, 187 Starbucks, 236–37, 274n37 Steinbeck, John, 4–5 Stiles, Lela, 73 Still, William Grant, 144 straw polls, 26–27, 52, 54, 111 structures of feeling (Williams), 34 Studebaker, John, 163; as commissioner of education, 162–64; oversight of Americans All—Immigrants All program, 165, 166, 168, 177, 178–79, 188–89, 217, 223 Susman, Warren I., 7, 126 Sussmann, Leila, 68 Tea Party, 21 television, 29, 120–21 Tennessee Valley Authority, 46, 67 thick description (Geertz), 233, 273n27 Tilly, Charles, 23 Tocqueville, Alexis de: Democracy in America, 5; on drive to succeed as priority over political engagement, 195–96, 205, 207; as observer of American democracy, 83–84, 86 Toigo, Avinere, 162–63 Trump, Donald: anti-immigrant rhetoric of, 218; and corporate response to storming US Capitol, 235; as entertaining politician, 119; populism of, 21, 24–25, 220, 222; as post-truth president, 22; presidential elections of, 24; techniques of, 64, 215–16 truth, denial of, 22 twisted populism, use of term, 80–81, 113, 114, 252n2. See also pollsters, populism and citizenship Twitter, 1 US Constitution, 46, 82–83 US Department of Education, 173, 177



US Office of Education, 166, 179, 180 US Supreme Court, “packing” incident, 73–74, 114 Volstead Act (1919), 156 Wake Up and Live! (Brande), 203–4 Wall, Wendy L., 14, 159 “Wall Street Putsch,” 12 Walter, L. Rohe, 124 War of the Worlds radio broadcast (Welles), 120–21 Washington, George, 19, 60, 129, 131–32 Washington Post, fact-check website, 228 Weber, Max, 98, 99, 195–96 weight-loss movement, 214 Welles, Orson, 120–21 Whalen, Grover, 127, 142–43

index

[301]

White, Richard D., 70 White House press corps, 61–64, 63 Williams, Raymond, 34 Wilson, Woodrow, 112 within-group diversity, 233–35, 274n29 Wood, Thomas J., 229 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 70; Federal Art Project, 22; Federal Writers’ Project, 8, 241n5; Radio Education Project, 162, 178–79 world’s fairs, as infotainment, 121–24, 208, 213. See also Chicago World’s Fair (1933); New York World’s Fair (1939) You Must Relax (Jacobson), 198–99 Zolberg, Aristide, 155–56 Zukor, Adolph, 175