How to Grow a Rumor

In his weekly newspaper column, "What People Are Thinking," Elmo Roper usually gives the facts about his public-opinion polls. This week he thought the time had come to scotch the story about a poll he never made. He wrote:

This is about a poll which was recently taken by Rumor--not by Roper.. ..

Over a month ago, two responsible newsmen called me on the phone from Washington to ask me about an election survey I was reported to have just concluded. They said that they were particularly interested in the heavy following the poll was supposed to show for Henry Wallace.

Then they proceeded to tell me that they had heard Wallace had polled 11% to 11.5% of the popular vote in a "secret poll" I had taken for Henry Luce of TIME magazine.

I assured both gentlemen that we had taken no such poll on Wallace. . . . But a few weeks later, the inquiry of the two newsmen had turned into a so-called "inside" story by two Washington correspondents of the People's World, a West Coast version of the Communist Daily Worker. This time, the 11% for Wallace had jumped to 11,000,000 votes (11% of a possible 60,000,000 votes is a little over 6,000,000)!

From the Communist People's World in San Francisco, the elusive rumor about Roper's "secret" poll on Wallace for Luce jumped across the desk of Walter Winchell, who reported that Mr. Luce's poll (he didn't say Roper did it) showed Wallace to have 15,000,000 votes. . . . From Mr. Winchell's Broadway column, the rumor fell back again into the Communist press . . . where it was reported that it was reliably reported that Roper had done the poll on Wallace for Luce, and when Luce saw the results he told Roper to go back and do another poll. And the second poll, according to the Daily Worker, showed Wallace to have over 11,000,000 votes. (An example of admirable restraint --for the Daily Worker to put the strength of the candidate they support at less than Mr. Winchell's figure!)

By this time, the story had reached the Washington gossip-go-round and various letters-to-the-editor pages of papers in New York and Chicago--and the figure cited as that which Roper had given to Luce who had given it back to Roper who in turn gave it back to Luce who finally was alleged to have buried it in FORTUNE'S "secret" files was not 11%, not 11,000,000, not 13,000,000, not 15,000,000, but 18,000,000[CLOSE_P]

By this time I felt that this alleged child of Roper, sired by Rumor, out of Washington, had grown big enough. I wrote to the Daily Worker, and called Mr. Winchell to tell them that no such poll on Mr. Wallace had ever been taken by me, that if and when any such poll were taken, neither Henry Luce nor anyone else either would or could suppress it. As a matter of fact, in over ten years of directing the FORTUNE Survey, neither Mr. Luce nor anyone else has ever tried to suppress any of our polls, despite the fact that Mr. Luce has not always liked their results. . . .

There is a survey on presidential candidates in the hands of our interviewers in the field at the moment--and this one really is being conducted by Roper for FORTUNE. Mr. Wallace is included in it. It's going to be interesting to see if those who so eagerly believe Mr. Winchell and the Daily Worker will as willingly accept these results a few weeks from now.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.