Polls & Policies

A happy President would be Franklin Roosevelt if he should find on his desk some morning a miraculous thermometer which would register, accurately and impartially, the temperature of public sentiment toward his policies. Lacking such a device, he tries to make his own estimate from the enormous stream of White House letters and visits from persons who presume to interpret the public mind to him. But the President, like his predecessors, has long since learned that such personal interpretations must be heavily discounted. Mr. Roosevelt does not need to be told that he himself is still highly popular with the country. But it does not follow that his program in all its dizzy ramifications enjoys the same popularity.

Therefore the White House could well afford to welcome last week results of two polls of newsmen on the New Deal. Granting the inconclusiveness of all straw votes and the opinionatedness of most editors, the polls furnished the President with a fair indication of the standing of his program with a small group which in turn is supposedly representative of the upper half of the population of the country.

Newsdom, a Depression-born trade journal, asked a picked group of the nation's newsmen for a personal ''Yes'' or ''No'' on the New Deal. By last week it had received and tabulated replies from editors and publishers of about 35% of the U. S. daily press. The New Deal was running ahead in the nation, 5 1/2-to-4 1/2. But it was behind in every New England state except Maine, in the industrial East (except New Jersey) and in most of the Midwest--Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin. The South was solidly loyal and of all Western states only South Dakota and Wyoming showed more nays than yeas. The National Industrial Conference Board, a fact-finding eye of Big Business, quizzed all 12,076 editors of U. S. newspapers and farm journals. Each editor was asked to disregard his personal opinions, report his community's sentiment. More than 5,000 responded to this ticklish task. The editors shied in droves from abstract spectres of change. Does your community, asked the Board, favor the principle of government competition with private business? No!--by 27-to-1. The Board tried a new tack. Does your community favor government competition with the transportation business? One editor in nine said yes. Does it want the government to go into the power business? One editor in four said yes. Would it like to see the government take over the banks? Yes, indeed, chorused more than a third of the editors. Sentiment swung back 18-to-1 against permitting the Government to manage private businesses. Likewise the community spokesmen agreed that hope of profits is essential to business progress. Production control and price-fixing for industry went down by 8-to-1 and 5-to-1 respectively; the same measures for agriculture were smothered by margins only slightly smaller. Sentiment was 4-to-1 against court-enforced government codes for business; nearly 4-to-1 against government regulation of business profits. The Board grew specific about regulation. What about letting the Government set minimum wages and maximum working hours? Yes, replied more than half of the editors. Nearly three-fourths of the editors were sure their communities did not want the Government to redistribute wealth by taxation or any other means. Nine-tenths were against any rise in the national debt. But one New Deal theory which got a thumping favorable majority was one which would, of necessity, increase the public debt or require a considerable redistribution of wealth. Almost two-thirds of the editors plumped for some compulsory government system of old age pensions. That government itself needs some regulating the editors indicated by voting 8-to-1 for trimming Federal payrolls, 4-to-1 for putting New Deal agencies under Civil Service rules. Only one editor in four thought Federal administrators could be trusted with sole power to tinker the dollar.

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