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Page 1- Surveys of Public Opinion in the USA See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256496492 Surveys of Public Opinion in the USA Concerning Latin America during the Second World War Conference Paper · June 2013 CITATIONS READS 0 64 1 author: José Luis Ortiz Garza Universidad Panamericana Sede México, Mexico City, Mexico 24 PUBLICATIONS 17 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Libro sobre Propaganda Británica en México en la Segunda Guerra Mundial View project Libro por publicarse View project All content following this page was uploaded by José Luis Ortiz Garza on 03 June 2014. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Surveys of Public Opinion in the USA Concerning Latin America during the Second World War José Luis Ortiz Garza* Paper submitted to ICA´s Communication History Interest Group for presentation at the 2013 Conference in London *Dean of the School of Communication Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City Campus [email protected] Revised on July 28, 2013 -Page 1- Abstract: The following examines a series of public opinion polls made between 1939 and 1945 in the United States to sample opinion concerning Latin America. These surveys were carried out by the Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA), coordinated by Nelson A. Rockefeller. Leading authorities as George Gallup and Hadley Cantril were in charge of these polls, yet there is scarce written account on the episode. This was the first time that the knowledge, perceptions and attitudes of the American people in regard to Latin America were systematically gauged by the U.S. Government in order to decide on public policies and even clandestine operations. Mostly based on documents unearthed from the National Archives at College Park (MD) and the Rockefeller Archive Center in Tarrytown (NY), this paper aims to present a more complete picture of the history of the Field of Communication. What exactly did the everyday American in fact know about Latin America and its people at the time? Discovering what the U.S. citizen perceived about their continental neighbors during the Second World War posed interesting methodological challenges. The researchers responded using innovative approaches at the time. This included panel groups and interviewing samples comprised only by opinion leaders. A further question to ponder is whether the overall examination of the “Good Neighbor Policy” effectively met the goals they were specifically created for – to -Page 2- help advance what Nelson Rockefeller called “hemispheric solidarity”, or mutual understanding between U.S. and Latin Americans. First Surveys about Latin America in the United States In the late 1930s, as drums of war banged loud in europe and Nazi activities increased in America, issues regarding Latin America were included in opinion polls made in the U.S. by organizations like Gallup, Roper, and Fortune.1 The first systematic opinion-polling in the United States concerning Latin America, however, emerged as a result of the objectives of the “Office of Inter-American Affairs” [OIAA]. Aimed to increase hemispheric solidarity and combat Axis propaganda, this agency was created in August 1940 by the U. S. Government and chaired by Nelson A. Rockefeller. 2 From the very beginning Rockefeller realized that his program required a good knowledge of the field conditions in Latin America and a better understanding in the U.S. of their continental neighbors. He and his staff were “aware of the significance of public opinion in regard to operations, and the need to evaluate this public opinion by means of specific machinery”.3 1 The major sources of what polls questions were asked during these early years are: Hadley Cantril, Public Opinion, 1935-1946, Princeton University Press (1946), the poll reports in Public Opinion Quarterly and the The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. The earliest questions that the former list on Central and South America (p. 95) are from December, 1940. The latter refers refers that Gallup included questions in a survey made from April 13-18, 1936. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Tom W. Smith, from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), at University of Chicago, for providing me with this information, as well as for: “The Origin and Development of Cross-national, Survey Research”, Paper presented for the Thematical Seminar “The Early Days of Survey Research and Their Importance Today”. Vienna, July 1-3, 2010. 2 Donald W. Rowland, History of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Washington, D. C., 1947, pp. 1-7. 3 Ibid., p. 83, 105-114. -Page 3- To the OIAA the great challenge was to persuade U.S. citizens to set jingoistic sentiments aside and become more interested in getting to know their good neighbors to the south. The task involved stripping off deeply embedded timeworn stereotypes about Latin American people and to embrace them as partners, strategic allies and fellow Americans. The Creation of “American Social Surveys, Inc.” Rockefeller contacted George Gallup, a leading authority on public opinion measurement, to help him in the gathering of information for the OIAA in the United States and abroad. The first step was the creation of “American Social Surveys Inc.” (ASS), a private, nonprofit corporation with Gallup as nominal President, Hadley Cantril as Vice President and Executive Officer, and two chief aides: Dr. Leonard Doob and Lloyd A. Free. On October 14, 1940, Rockefeller and Gallup signed a contract by which the ASS would deliver to the OIAA reports about attitudes of U.S. citizens toward Latin America, as well as information from the other American Republics regarding their opinions, tastes, and habits. 4 The contract established a limit of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the final report that ASS should deliver before December 31, 1941. The maximum amount set in this agreement was steadily reduced in the next year, while the termination date was extended until December 31, 1942. 5 4 For the public opinion activities in Latin America made by the OIAA, see: José Luis Ortiz Garza. “The Early Days of Survey Research in Latin America”, in Hass Hannes, Hynek Jerabek and Thomas Petersen (eds.) The Early Days of Survey Research and their Importance Today, Vienna, Braumüller, 2012, pp. 150-165. 5 Donald Rowland, op. cit., p. 84 -Page 4- Gallup asked Nelson Rockefeller to steer his name away from the public in the ASS contract and recommended Dr. Hadley Cantril to lead the project. 6 Cantril and Gallup had become close friends when the former started the Office of Public Opinion Research at Princeton University (OPOR), and when they co-chaired the Radio Research Project. Since the Rockefeller Foundation funded all of these institutions7, both Cantril and Gallup were indebted to the Coordinator of Inter- American Affairs and fully supported him. There was, thus, a clear interplay between the Rockefeller Foundation, Gallup's AIPO, Princeton's OPOR, and the OIAA. The newly formed ASS was also supported by this machinery. An article published in December 1940 by Hadley Cantril in Public Opinion Quarterly summarized the goal of the partnership, stating that the Rockefeller Foundation created a grant for an OPOR project to try and “chart the course of American opinion throughout the conflict.” 8 In regards to the study’s process, he noted that data would be collected by the AIPO’s “fact-finding facilities” 9 and credited them with permitting “to use its polling instrument to ask questions of representative samples of the national population, to duplicate all of its results and to pool its own information with the answers to questions sponsored by the Project.” 10 6 NACP, RG 229, Box 138, EIB-ASS 15, From Hadley Cantril to Carl Spaeth, January 28, 1941. 7 Everett M. Rogers, A History of Communication Study: A Biographical Approach, New York, The Free Press, 1997, pp. 268-269. 8 Hadley Cantril, “America Faces the War: A Study in Public Opinion”, Public Opinion Quarterly, September 1940, p. 393. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. -Page 5- Cantril entered into collaboration with Gallup as a virtual partner, using the American Institute of Public Opinion (AIPO) for the development of research policy and methodology. 11 This cooperation became essential to carrying out the different surveys that Nelson Rockefeller required in regard to Latin America. It is relevant to consider that most of the surveys made by ASS in the U.S. were often built on polls conducted either by AIPO or by OPOR. Hadley Cantril decided which questions would be asked to the whole sample (or to parts of it) according to the interests of the OIAA concealed behind the label of American Social Surveys, Inc. According to Rowland, the OIAA conducted four cross-national public opinion polls and three spot surveys in the U.S. between January 10, 1941 and November 20, 1942 12. These surveys, currently held at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, are specifically mentioned by their ordinal number from the “First Confidential Report” to the “Sixth Confidential Report”.13 Another survey conducted in June 1941 to measure reactions to the Russo-German war does not follow the sequential numbering above-mentioned, but it was clearly made for the OIAA. It is also safe to say that the specific “Opinion Concerning this Government's Argentine Policy” survey, made and delivered by Hadley Cantril in August 1944, resulted by request of the Department of State.14 11 Jean M. Converse, Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence 1890-1960, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1987, p. 133. 12 Rowland, op. cit., p. 84. Rowland's references to the surveys come from the date stamped on the cover of each of the reports, leaving out the periods of sample interviewing and data analysis, information that sometimes provides interesting ideas about methodological hurdles or questions.
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