Changing Opinions About Business Prosperity

Trends in American Thinking about the economic emergency, as expressed in leading magazines, have been summarized for the period January, 1929, to June, 1932. Two groups of general periodicals, the huge-circulation (over one million) group and the lesser-circulation, or S. N. N. C., group (including the Survey, Nation, New Republic, and Christian Century), were analyzed in detail by "attitude indicators" simple, unmodified statements of specified attitudes or propositions. The huge-circulation group showed a fourfold increase in the number of indicators per month for the 1932 period, the S. N. N. C. group an eleven fold increase. The huge-circulation group accorded 54 per cent of all their attitude indicators to business conditions and prospects and popular campaigns against the depression, the S. N. N. C. group 13 per cent. The attitudes of the former were consistently more optimistic, though the optimism decreased down through 1932. The periodicals in the S. N. N. C. group were more realistic, following the trend of actual conditions more closely. Popular campaign against the depression account for 17 per cent of the attitude indicators in the huge-circulation group in 1932 and only 1 per cent in the S. N. N. C. group. The huge-circulation group accorded more attention to the stock market, credit and currency, and international aspects of the depression than did the S. N. N. C. group but less to unemployment and relief. To economic planning the S. N. N. C. group accorded more attitude indicators than to any other topic. On this and on radical proposals their attention was markedly greater than that of the hugecirculation group

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