Communism, Conformity and Liberties

Ferdinand Tonnies, Samuel A. Stouffer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138520851
• eBook ISBN: 9781351527460
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Process
• Index: Politics & International Relations

If there is a-"desert island" book in the conduct of social research, it is arguably this book. Whether in terms of sociological structures or psychological nuances, Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties, originally published in 1955, is a recognized landmark. Stouffer helped strengthen the fundamental liberties of all Americans by showing dangerous consequences of efforts to thwart a perceived Communist conspiracy, including some of the very real liberties that can be destroyed in the process of a witch-hunt.

Stouffer explores attitudes of Americans against a backdrop of a history of intolerance that dates back to the Know-Nothing party before the Civil War and extending through the Ku Klux Klan after World War I. The overall results show a markedly strong relationship between perception of high national risk and personal intolerance of differences, and also the perception of threat and tolerance that operates as a predisposing tendency that affects judgments about specific political movements and events.

Stouffer enriches the sense and meaning of survey research by emphasizing patterns of percentages rather than actual amounts; survey craftsmanship; the use of paired sampling techniques to reduce problems of chance; the importance of completion rates in survey research work; the importance of interruptions during a questioning period; the choice of field workers in performing the surveys. The actual survey instruments are included as prepared by the National Opinion Research Center and the Gallup Organization. They remain a model for large-scale samples of this kind.

The beautiful, highly personal, introduction by James Davis places Stouffer in an appropriate academic and professional context. Stouffer was a great sociologist with two landmark efforts to his credit: The American Soldier and then Communism, Conformity and Civil Liberties. Professor Davis calls this "a great classic of empirical sociology." It is

Chapter One

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT

This is a report to the American people on the findings of a survey which was unique in its scope and in some of its methods.

More than 6000 men and women, in all parts of the country and in all walks of life, confided their thoughts in an interview which was as impartial as fallible ingenuity was able to devise. Over 500 skilled interviewers from two national research agencies did the field work.

The survey examines in some depth the reactions of Americans to two dangers.

One, from the Communist conspiracy outside and inside the country. Two, from those who in thwarting the conspiracy would sacrifice some of the very liberties which the enemy would destroy.

This inquiry, made in the summer of 1954, was concerned not with transient opinions but with deeper latent attitudes or dispositions. Some types of reactions to the Communist threat are not new and will be encountered in years to come. To think otherwise is to ignore what has happened throughout the long perspective of American history. Our Constitution was scarcely ten years old when national tempers were expressed in the Alien and Sedition Acts, under which editors went to jail for criticizing the government, and even bystanders at political meetings who made contemptuous remarks were hurried off to court. Eventually the “sober second thought of the people” prevailed. The Know-Nothing Party before the Civil War and the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction period and again after World War I are other manifestations of intolerance. In the light of this record, will future historians find that the intolerance which thus far has marked the 1950s has been so extraordinary, considering the imagined provocation? There are people who see the danger from Communists as justifying drastic measures of repression, including the forfeiture of rights which were centuries in the making. Just as in the Civil War the North felt obliged to suspend the right of habeas corpus to cope with the Copperhead conspiracy, so today do some alarmed citizens feel that the country cannot risk the luxury of full civil liberties for nonconformists. But there are others who disagree. They are convinced that our protection from Communist espionage and sabotage can be safely entrusted to the F.B.I, and other branches of an alert government, and that the diminishing risks of conversion of other Americans to Communism can be met by an enlightened public opinion.

The stark fact remains that for unknown years the free Western world must live under a menacing shadow. Vigilance cannot be relaxed against either the peril from without or varieties of perils from within. The question is: How can the sober second thought of the people be maintained in a state of readiness to resist external and internal threats to our heritage of liberties?

To contribute toward answers to this question, this book offers a body of data. Some of the specific findings may seem obvious. Some may not. A few may be so unexpected as to put a strain on acceptance. We hope that these findings, along with knowledge from other sources, can aid responsible citizens—in our government; in our newspaper offices and broadcasting studios; in our schools, churches, and other organizations within the local community—as they plan better for the task ahead. Following are some of the questions considered:

Who are the people most likely to have given the sober second thought to the problems with which we are concerned?

What about the attitudes of responsible civic leaders as compared with the rank and file within a community?

Is the American public in a state of pathological fear?

Are we raising a new generation which will be more sensitive or less sensitive than its elders to threats to freedom? What is the impact of our educational system, which provides more schooling to more youth than in any other nation in history?

Do attitudes differ in different regions of the country? In cities as compared with rural areas? Among men as compared with women? What role does religion play?

How are the images about Communists which people carry in their heads related to willingness to deprive other nonconformists, who are not necessarily Communists, of civil rights?

How important are agencies of mass communication likely to be in evoking more thoughtful reflection on the issues of Communism and civil liberties? How well do the people know the views of leaders they respect? What can be accomplished by responsible citizens in their local communities?

These are some of the topics which this study has investigated. Not with an eye on the opinions about any particular public figure or on issues which may be ephemeral. Rather on basic underlying sentiments which do not change abruptly or fluctuate with the day’s headlines. No one study can provide all the answers we need. Further inquiries must follow. Here and there new studies should record new trends as time goes on, but the main patterns of basic attitudes reported in this book will not undergo a metamorphosis overnight.

Who Were Interviewed in This Survey

The survey, made in May, June, and July 1954, sought to combine the best features of several techniques of inquiry.

It is basically a public opinion poll and was conducted in the field not by just one but by two of the foremost public opinion research organizations. One was the American Institute of Public Opinion— the Gallup Poll. The other was the National Opinion Research Center, a non-profit organization with headquarters at the University of Chicago. Each agency used its own staff of sampling experts to draw independently what was intended to constitute a representative cross-section of the American population. The result is that, for the first time in the history of public opinion polling, the work of two different agencies can be compared on an entire questionnaire. Each of the two national cross-sections contains more than 2400 cases. The greatest advantage of utilizing two agencies was that each was able to carry out a very large assignment within a reasonable time without adding inexperienced interviewers to its staff. Quality was the first consideration. The total number of interviewers was 537.

The type of sampling method used was costly and time-consuming. Technically it is known as the “probability method,” in contrast to the quota method more commonly used. In simplest outline, the probability method, as employed in the present survey, consists of the following steps:

1. From a list of all the counties and metropolitan areas in the United States, a sample is drawn at random. These selected counties and metropolitan areas are called “primary sampling units.’’

2. Within each primary sampling unit, urban blocks and rural segments are selected, also strictly at random.

3. Within each selected block or segment, interviewers list systematically every dwelling unit. Among these dwelling units a sample of X is selected, also strictly at random.

4. Within each of the selected dwelling units all adults are enumerated, and one in each dwelling is selected for the interview. This one is selected according to a fixed rule which leaves the interviewer no flexibility in making substitutions.

5. Once the individual adult within the household is designated as the sample person, the interviewer is required to make repeated calls until he finds him or her at home and available for interview. This is the most time-consuming and costly part of the procedure.

6. No substitutions are permitted, and every effort is made to track down absentees, even assigning them to interviewers in other parts of the country if away on vacation. Some refusals are inevitable but are kept to a minimum by the resourcefulness of the trained interviewers. If that resourcefulness is unavailing, letters and even telegrams from the home office of the agency often overcome the remaining resistance. A careful analysis of the “fish that got away” appears in Appendix A, with the conclusion that bias thus occasioned could not be appreciably large.

The probability method of sampling has important advantages over the method more often used; namely, the quota method. In using the quota method, communities, or even street segments, are selected at random as described above, but the interviewer is left free to choose respondents, provided he or she ends up with a prescribed proportion of people with various attributes, such as a given sex, age, etc. The probability method eliminates any possible bias of the interviewer in the selection of respondents. For example, those who respond readily without urging, or who live in more accessible places, or who are at home at the time of call may be so different in some respects relevant to the study that a bias is introduced. The probability method also has important advantages from the mathematical standpoint of calculating margins of error attributable to chance alone.

The probability method has disadvantages also. One is its cost, which can be two to five times as high as the quota method. An interviewer may have to spend the aggregate of a day’s time on a succession of efforts to make contact with a single respondent. The other is its slowness. If a study must be completed in a few days, the quota method, or some modification of it, seems to be the only answer. But to stretch out the field work on a survey over a period of several weeks, as is necessary with a large probability sample, is to run the risk that some important happening in the news may change opinions in the middle of the survey. As will be noted in Chapter Two, there is no evidence of changes in basic attitudes during the course of the survey.

For further details on sampling, the reader is referred to Appendix A of this volume.

The aggregate number of cases obtained on the national cross-sections by the two agencies was 4933. In most of the tables and charts shown in the main body of this book, the two cross-sections are combined and treated as one. The agreement between the two cross-sections was quite close and most gratifying. Examples are shown in Chapter Two and subsequently.

But this combined cross-section of 4933 cases is only a part of the study. A unique feature of the survey lay in obtaining an additional special sample of 1500 selected local community leaders, entirely independent of the national cross-section. In this book the special sample of community leaders is always tabulated separately, never pooled with the cross-section.

Unlike the respondents in the cross-section, the community leaders were of necessity arbitrarily selected. But extreme care was taken to preclude interviewer bias in their selection. The steps in the sampling process were as follows:

1. From each of the cities of 10,000 to 150,000 in the sample, an arbitrary list of 14 occupational roles was drawn up. The same list was used in each city. It included the mayor, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, the chairman of the Community Chest, the president of a predesignated large labor-union local in the city, the chairmen of the Republican and Democratic county central committees, the commander of the largest American Legion post in the city, the regent of the D.A.R., the president of the local women’s club, the chairmen of the school board and the library board, the president of the local council of the Parent-Teachers’ Association (or if there was no such council, of the largest P.T.A. in the city), the president of the bar association, the publisher of the locally owned newspaper of largest circulation.

2. The list, it will be seen, was so drawn up that interviewer bias in selection was precluded, since one person only could fit a given description in a given community. Each interviewer prepared a list of the names and addresses of the 14 in his city, and to each of the 14 a letter was sent, signed by the head of the polling agency responsible for that city. (For this operation, each of the two polling organizations took full responsibility for half of the cities.) The letter, which spoke of the national importance of the survey without indicating the subject matter, was designed to pave the way for personal appointments at the least inconvenience to the respondents, many of whom are very busy people.

3. The selected community leaders were interviewed with questionnaires identical with those used in the national cross-section.

While the national cross-section can be defended as representative of all classes of the population, it must be stated here emphatically that the sample of leaders is not intended to be and is not a representative sample of community leaders in America. There is no objective definition of what constitutes a community leader and, even if there were, the cost of procuring a large and exhaustive sample would be prohibitive.

What, then, does the sample of leaders represent?

First, it represents only people in the cities of 10,000 to 150,000; people in rural communities, smaller cities, and larger metropolitan centers are by definition excluded.

Second, it represents only arbitrarily selected leaders. Strictly speaking, an average based on all such leaders combined is not susceptible of clear interpretation. What we can say, however, is the following: The mayors, for example, are a representative sample of all mayors in cities of 10,000 to 150,000. By “representative” we mean that if we had been able to interview all such mayors in all American cities of this size the result would differ from those in our sample only by a relatively small chance error, which is mathematically calculable. Similarly with each of the other incumbents of positions as defined. And this can provide very important, interpretable knowledge.

But why 14? This is not a magic number but is simply the maximum which the budget of time and money permitted in a given city. And why these particular 14? There is no right or wrong answer to this question. Each leadership role was chosen either because, as in the case of the president of the Community Chest, for example, he was likely to be a generally respected figure; or because, as in the case of the president of the Chamber of Commerce or the bar association or the largest labor-union local, he was likely, on the average, to be influential among certain segments of the population; or because, as in the case of heads of patriotic organizations or in the case of various elected or appointed officials, the specific nature of their responsibility made their views especially relevant.

It would be easy to construct a list twice as long or longer. Women’s groups, for example, are inadequately represented—missing are such organizations oriented to public affairs as the League of Women Voters. The clergy are unrepresented—it proved to be too difficult to settle on a satisfactory objective definition of a single clergyman to represent each city. Fraternal groups are omitted. So are leaders of ethnic minority organizations.

On the whole, in so far as the sample of leaders is biased, there are fewer rather than more leaders who would automatically be expected to have liberal attitudes.

For purposes of comparison with the views of each of the 14 selected types of leaders, a special sub-sample of the national cross-section has been segregated for exactly the same cities as those used for the sample of leaders. This sub-sample should be representative of the total population of all such cities, in the same sense as the mayors are representative of all mayors in cities of 10,000 to 150,000.

So much for the samples. We see that they introduce features some of which are rare and some of which are new in national surveys of this type.

What Kinds of Questions Were Asked?

The questionnaire used is reproduced in full in Appendix B. It is somewhat unconventional, by customary opinion-survey practice, in two main respects.

First, it relied more heavily than many surveys on what are called free-answer or open-ended questions. Much care was taken not to introduce specific check-list questions until the respondent had had a chance to talk generally about a subject. For example, the first twenty minutes or so of the interview were devoted to a general discussion of whatever things the respondent had most on his or her mind, without any hint as to the ultimate purpose of the survey. This was facilitated only by such leading questions by the interviewer as the following:

Everybody of course has some things he worries about, more or less. Would you say you worry more now than you used to, or not as much?

What kinds of things do you worry most about?

Are there other problems you worry or are concerned about, especially political or world problems?

We are interested in what kind of things people talk about. Offhand, what problems do you remembering discussing with your f...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• Introduction to the Original Edition
• Chapter 1 What this Book is About
• Chapter 2 Are Civic Leaders More Tolerant than Other People?
• Chapter 3 Is There a National Anxiety Neurosis?
• Chapter 4 How Tolerant is the New Generation?
• Chapter 5 Does it Matter where People Live?
• Chapter 6 Do Women have Viewpoints Different from Men?
• Chapter 7 What Aspects of Communism do Americans Distrust Most?
• Chapter 8 How far does the Communist Threat Account for Intolerance of Nonconformists?
• Appendices