Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 12

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Popular Culture Review

It was also in this July 1935 issue that Fortune introduced the
innovative Fortune Survey, generally credited with being the first
published public opinion polM^ Elmo Roper, a free-lance writer who
had worked for J. Walter Thompson, and Fortune editor Eric Hodgins
decided that surveys used to discover consumer preferences could also
provide a knowledge of public opinion on political and social matters.
The first publication of Elmo Roper's Fortune national survey was
"aimed at the presentation of facts which American industrialists do
not themselves publish."
The early Fortune surveys in 1935 did indicate general public
support for the New Deal socio-economic changes taking place in the
country. A large majority believed that the government should see to
it that every man who wanted to work had a job. It did reveal wide
class differences on the question of labor relations. However, scholars
of American labor much later used these surveys to show that
radicalism in the U.S. was doomed by the relatively low class
consciousness in the U.S. as compared to Europe. Nearly two
generations later these scholars would determine that the Fortune
Surveys "were more relevant. . . than any of the other contemporary
data with regard to public opinion based on social class."^^ President
Roosevelt became a regular follower of the Roper Fortune Survey and
always made certain that he received the results in advance of
publication.^®
Not that all Fortune articles were serious with economic and
governmental import. The February 1935 issue of Fortune featured
stories on the workings of the U.S. ^ n ate, Philco Radio, Studebaker,
and the Mormon capitalist Mariner Stoddard Eccles as well as an
article entitled, "Girls, Girls, Girls, Girls, Girls—The Business of
Burlesque, A.D. 1935." The successful American businessman of the
1930s prided himself on being more worldly and sophisticated than
the Babbitt depicted by Sinclair Lewis the previous decade, and
presumably appreciated this subject!
Ultimately it would not be articles on birth control or burlesque
which would create the most controversy. It was the reaction to a
series of critical articles on the U.S. Steel Corporation in 1936 written
by the famed and increasingly avowed radical writer Dwight
Macdonald which would signal a shift toward more direct influence
by Luce again on editorial matters.^^ Dwight Macdonald charged
that his articles were "abbreviated and emasculated" before