It will be seen from chart No. 5 that the answers to the preliminary questionnaire totaled approximately 26 percent of the firms contacted. In most categories, there were more firms answering who either export or import than those who are engaged only in domestic trade. Since it is known that there are more firms engaged solely in domestic trade than in export-import business, it is evident that a higher percentage of answers was received from those firms interested in foreign trade. It is only natural that firms having no foreign trade would not bother to answer the questionnaire. This is particularly true of the many small firms in the area that obviously, from the type of manufacturing done, do not depend on foreign materials or worry about foreign competition.

It will also be noted that approximately one-quarter of the firms who are engaged in export business, or use imported materials in the manufacturing process indicated that their markets were adversely affected by import competition. Only 26 firms, which did not import or export were concerned with this problem of competition, including 6 in fabricated metals, 3 in nonelectrical machinery, and 3 in textiles and apparel.

It may be of interest that of the 481 firms answering "Yes" to one or more of the questions, 432 were in Missouri and 49 in Illinois.

I. Method

PART III

THE OPINION QUESTIONNAIRE

The public opinion poll was designed to shed light on a number of questions relevant to the purposes of the survey; the degree of public interest in issues centering on international trade, differences in degree of this interest among selected localities in the St. Louis area, differences in opinion among those interested in these issues. For this purpose a very brief and simple questionnaire was used, requiring a minimum of effort to be completed and returned by the voters polled. The following 5 questions were mailed on 2,500 double postcards to a random selection of registered voters in the St. Louis metropolitan area: 1. Do you use any imported products in your everyday living? Yes No opinion

No

2. Do you think imported raw materials are necessary for our national defense? Yes No opinion

No

3. Do you think United States trade with countries threatened by communism would help keep them on our side of the Iron Curtain?

No opinion

Yes

No

4. Do you think the United States needs to sell surplus farm products abroad? Yes No No opinion 5. Do you think making it easier for countries to trade with us would increase the chances for world peace? Yes Νο

The cards also carried the following explanation:

No opinion

"World trade affects you! World trade affects business in St. Louis! "The League of Women Voters is conducting a survey and you have been selected as part of a scientifically chosen sample of registered voters. We want your opinion on world trade. Your cooperation in answering five questions will be greatly appreciated. Results of the poll will be published in May. Please note your signature is not required. Just check one answer to each question and drop the attached postcard in a mailbox."

There were 500 cards mailed to registered voters in Belleville, Ill.; 500 to Bonhomme Township in Missouri, and 1,500 to St. Louis voters. These districts were chosen because of the following characteristics:

Bonhomme Township, St. Louis County, the second largest of 14 such political subdivisions in St. Louis County, was selected as a diverse residential and smallfarm area. The township has 16,000 registered voters in its 29 precincts, and the area extends from the Missouri River on the north, south to Jefferson County between Fenton and Valley Park, west to Meramec Township, and east to the townships of Lemay, Clayton, and Gravois.

Kirkwood is the largest community in Bonhomme Township, and here about 70 percent of the registered voters live. While there is no heavy industry in Kirkwood, there is some small industry and the local chamber of commerce has 235 members. Most of the working population is employed out of Kirkwood, mainly in the city of St. Louis. Largely an upper middle class community of homeowners, Kirkwood's vote is consistently Republican.

Chesterfield is also in Bonhomme Township. It is a small community with many of the county's most wealthy residents. Farming area surrounds Chester

field and this precinct votes 6 to 1 Republican. Ellisville, Ballwin (a rapidly growing residential area), Fenton (some resorts), and Manchester are small communities among farms, and are all predominantly Republican. Only Valley Park, with two precincts, and the Meacham Park precinct (with a large Negro population) sometimes vote Democratic. Creve Coeur Lake and Castlewood, poorer communities with considerable substandard dwellings, are also made up largely of Republican voters.

Belleville, Ill., the county seat and second largest city of St. Clair County, has an estimated population of 36,000, with another 10,000 to 15,000 people in the immediate area. Belleville is partly surrounded by farms but borders on a highly industrialized area. The city itself covers an area of 6%1⁄2 square miles and is just east of East St. Louis.

Ninety-seven percent of the population is native-born, largely of German stock. While there is no pronounced slum area, 20 percent of the dwelling units in 1950 had only cold water or no inside water at all. There were fewer substandard

dwellings than in neighboring East St. Louis or Alton, Ill.

Industrially, the city is well developed and diversified, with 18 iron foundries and stone plants, a flour mill, 2 breweries, 2 meat packing plants, several bakeries and food canneries, 2 clothing manufacturers, and miscellaneous plants. Near the city are about 20 bituminous coal mines in operation. Also readily available are high-grade limestone, clay for bricks, and building sand. The farms raise much wheat, and some corn, soybeans, poultry, dairy products, fruit trees, and garden produce.

In 1950, 81 percent of the men and 26.5 percent of the women were counted in the labor force. Perhaps one-fourth of this number work outside of Belleville, in St. Louis or at Scott Airbase, which is 6 miles east of the city. City elections in Belleville are on a nonpartisan basis, though township elections, based on a coterminous area, are partisan. This results in some confusion. There are 31 precincts and about 19,900 registered voters. This is a low percentage of the total population. Until 1950, Belleville was long considered a Republican stronghold; since then it has voted predominantly Democratic.

St. Louis.-Three groupings of wards within the city of St. Louis were classified for this survey, based on voter participation in significant elections (including special elections on particular civic issues). Based on the percentage of eligible voters who are registered and on the percentage of registered voters who go to the polls, these groupings are as follows: High percentages (St. Louis No. 1): Wards 1, 12, 13, 15, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, totaling about 129,500 registered voters; medium percentages (St. Louis No. 2): Wards 2, 9, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18, 20, 22, 26, totaling about 119,750 registered voters; finally, the low percentages (St. Louis No. 3): Wards 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 16, 19, 21, totaling about 97,000 registered voters. People to be contacted in each of the above 5 divisions were chosen as follows: the total number of registered voters in each division was divided by 500, the number of cards to be sent to each division. Then in each division, the 500 names were marked on the lists at the proper intervals to distribute them evenly throughout the list. For example, in one division, every 190th name was marked; in another division, every 225th name, etc. The differences arose because of the different number of registered voters in each division. The same questions were also asked of each firm executive contacted in the detailed survey (pt. IV). II. Results

Some indication of the degree of public interest in issues centering on international trade may be gained from the overall response to the public opinion poll. Of the 2,500 self-addressed post cards mailed out, 16.2 percent were returned. This overall return obscures the fact that there was considerable variation in the rate of reply among the five areas polled by mail. Voters polled in Bonhomme Township returned 25.2 percent of the questionnaires, while only 11.4 percent of those polled in Belleville replied.

TABLE 6

Proportion of questionnaires returned by registered voters polled in selected areas of the St. Louis metropolitan area

Bonhomme Township, Mo..

St. Louis No. 1, Mo.

St. Louis No. 2, Mo.

St. Louis No. 3, Mo.
Belleville, Ill...

Total, all areas..

Percent

25. 2

18.8

13. S

12. 4

11. 4

16.2

This ranking of the five areas follows closely experience in the same communities with regard to the voter turnout for elections where issues are involved in contrast to elections where public offices are at stake. Voters in Bonhomme Township, for example, traditionally show a higher ratio of actual votes cast to total registration than other communities in elections involving issues. It seems reasonable to assume that the data in table No. 6 are a rough index of differences in the public's interest in the areas polled concerning issues centering on international trade.

The questions asked in the poll were designed to bring out two points of interest. The first of these concerned the awareness of the public of their everyday consumption of imported products in some form. Accordingly the first question asked was: No. 1. "Do you use any imported products in your everyday living?"

The percentage of people who failed to answer "yes" seems surprisingly high and may reflect some inisunderstanding of the question. Persons answering "no" to this question may quite possibly have thought the question referred to goods purchased as "imports.' However, even here examples of such items of everyday consumption as coffee, tea, cocoa, bananas, and cola drinks come readily to mind. The results of this question are all the more surprising if it is assumed that those sufficiently interested to return the questionnaire are quite possibly the best informed of the group to whom the cards were mailed.

The second point of interest toward which the questions in the poll were directed was the degree to which currently popular slogans concerning the role of foreign trade in the United States are positively accepted or rejected by the public as expressing their point of view. For this purpose the remaining four questions in the poll represented a paraphrase of certain of the slogans.

In the light of answers to the first question it is particularly interesting to note the response to the second question:

No. 2. "Do you think imported raw materials are necessary for our national defense?"

Replies:
Yes..
No...

No opinion...

Percent

78

13

9

The proportion of those with "no opinion" remains about the same as in the first question, but the "yes" answers jump up very sharply. Apparently people are much better informed about the place of imports in the defense production effort than they are in terms of their own everyday consumption.

The next question raised the issue of communism and placed it in the context of foreign trade. To this question the replies were also interesting.

No. 3. "Do you think United States trade with countries threatened by communism would help keep them on our side of the Iron Curtain?"

Here the number of people with no opinion drops sharply, indicating a somewhat more definite set of attitudes on this issue than on the previous question. Apparently, a sizable majority of those replying to the poll see foreign trade linked to foreign policy in general.

The next question was made purposely vague and ambiguous and served to link the "farm problem" with foreign trade. It is not clear from the question whether there is implied a need to sell farm surpluses abroad in order to preserve domestic price levels and to avoid accumulating large domestic stocks, or whether the question is concerned with the foreign need for American food supplies. Particularly, following on the heels of question No. 3 this latter interpretation is possible. The question was:

No. 4. "Do you think the United States needs to sell its surplus farm products abroad?"

Perhaps the point of interest here, as in the preceding question, is the small proportion of "no opinion" answers. The phrase "needs to sell" apparently had concrete meaning for most of the registered voters polled. Interesting also is the fact that of the four "issue" questions, this one evoked the highest proportion of negative answers.

The fifth question linked the issue of world peace with international trade and here, too, relatively few of those polled had no opinion. The question:

No. 5. "Do you think making it easier for countries to trade with us would increase the chances for world peace?"

Replies:
Yes.
No..

No opinion...

Percent

79

15

6

The poll was also directed at determining any difference of opinion among the several groups queried. For this purpose a sixth group was added to the poll, the representatives of the manufacturing firms who participated in the detailed survey. The response rate of this latter group cannot be compared with those receiving the questionnaire through the mail, since the conditions under which the poll was taken were considerably different. (The questionnaire was filled in by each executive in the presence of the League of Women Voters' interviewer picking up data used in pt. IV.) Table No. 7 summarizes the comparisons among all groups.

Table No. 7 reveals a number of noteworthy comparisons, but first a note of caution. The number of questionnaires returned from each of the several localities is so small as to make comparisons among them exceedingly dubious even when the differences may seem quite striking, though certain fairly general tendencies may be observed with care. For example, it is probably significant that "yes" replies from Bonhomme Township are a higher proportion of returns, in most cases substantially higher, than for any of the other localitics on every question. On the other hand, the fact that Belleville respondents replied 56 percent "yes" on question 1 should not be construed as representing a materially different point of view in that community from that indicated by the 47 percent "yes" answers for St. Louis No. 1 to the same question.

There is somewhat greater validity attached to contrasts between opinion expressed by company representatives and the expression of opinion made by the total replies of the voters polled. In each case the sample includes a fairly large number of people.

Given these qualifications, the following observations are aomg some of the many that will be noted from table No. 7:

1. The consistently higher proportion of "yes" answers for Bonhomme Township when compared with the other localities surveyed. (This, coupled with the higher response rate from Bonhomme Township, may indicate a somewhat different set of voter opinions on international trade in this locality than in the others.)

2. The contrast between "yes" answers to question 1 ("imported products in everyday living") by company representatives and the total voter replies (72 and 61 percent respectively).

3. A similar observation with respect to question 2 (imported raw material and national defense"), 87 percent "yes" for company representatives, contrasted with 78 percent for the voters. This, incidentally, is the one question where the company representatives recorded a higher proportion of "yes" answers than the Bonhomme Township voters.

4. The contrast between the distribution of company representatives' opinion on question 3 and that of the voters polled. The former group is apparently not quite so certain that United States trade with countries threatened by communism will help keep them on our side of the Iron Curtain as is the voter group. Perhaps even more important, a larger proportion of the company representatives are in the "no opinion" category on this question.