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(Page 3) PRIVATE POL) By FRITZ \VecELSANG When I was at the barber's recently a man came into the store, » introduced himself politely, and asked those present for permission to ask them questions. He asked about all sorts of things. He wanted to know how often and how much meat was eaten, how much one's weekly salary amounted to, whether one shaved every day, when and against whom a new war was to be expected, whether women teachers should remain single, who had the greatest prospects of being elected President, and a great many othér things. The interrogator was a man who was employed by a concern which is doing research on the attitude of the people and preparing statistics on this. The value of these official inquiries may be overestimated or underestimated, but it is certain that the results of such a poll of private citizens have gained an important place in the life of America. Politicians especially lend an attentive ear to the voice of the people. Hence election years are good times for institutes for research on public opinion. Many Congressmen even--——by paying for it, naturally—--ascertain their election prospects themselves, If the results are unfavorable, then naturally they will not be published. The average limit of mistakes in pre- dicting election results amounted to only 4%. It will, therefore, be quite interesting to follow the vacillations of popular opinion this year in the newspapers according to the figures. The number of agents which the firms are using for listening to the population often amounts into the hundreds. Often, too, advertising businesses took part in the mass interviews. All classes of the population are questioned so that the answers coming from 3,000 to 50,000 persons repre~ sent a miniature picture of America, , The two best-known experts in the field of the voting are Kessrs.)Gallup and jRoper. dee t . Science too makes use of the methods of mass interrogation for its. purposes. Prof,/Kinsey and his co-workers recently published a book on the J sexual life of the American man, which is based on the answers of 12,000 persons. As experts assure us, the important and sensational results of this work of research could scarcely have been achieved in any other way. In the periodical fortune", figures were published a few months | ago which are to be reproduced partly here. The poll was concerned with the following three questions: © ce CONGENTIHL