QUESTIONNAIRE
345
our readers are engaged in workingclass occupations, hut these range
widely-ore sampler, hosiery mill worker, shipyard worker, telephone
repairman.*
(c) LOCATION: PR readers are scattered through 42 states and 17
foreign countries. A breakdown of the regional distribution (taken from
our circulation records, not from the questionnaire returns) shows that PR
is primarily an urban enterprise, in readership as well as editing; the two
largest cities, with 9% of the nation's population, have
447o
of PR's
readers.
Section
%
of PR Readers
New York City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
West of Mississippi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Middle Atlantic States (exc. New York City) . . . . 13
Chicago . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9
Midwestern States (exc. Chicago) . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9
New England ...........
: .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8
Foreign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7
Southern States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
2.
How did readers first hear of PR?
Much the largest number first heard of the magazine through a friend
(30% ). Next most frequent sources were: ads in the
New Republic
(12% ), newsstands or bookstores (7% ), story in hook section of
Time
magazine last year
(57o),
libraries
(57o),
ads in the
Nation
(4%). The
old saw that any publicity is good publicity was modestly verified by the
fact that a few readers first learned of PR through Malcolm Cowley's
attacks on it several years ago and through the contemporaneous snipings
in
the Stalinist press. (It might also he noted that the
Time
article was by
no means friendly, or even fair.) The oddest reply to this question was:
"I mistook it for a brochure on proportional representation." The most
dramatic: "From a young American doctor, in November 1936, at Sierra
de Alcubierre on the Aragon Front, where I was fighting with the POUM
troops."
3.
What do PR readers want more of? What less of?
Almost everyhody-9 out of 10 answering this question-wants more
articles and hook reviews. Slightly more readers want less poetry than
want more poetry, and slightly more readers want more stories than want
less stories. Here it must he noted that by far the least liked aspect of PR
seems to
he
the poetry it prints. The big "less" vote on poetry was accom–
panied by such notations as "Why can't somebody write
one
good poem?"
•At the other end of ·the scale, for two years we had a Supreme Court Justice on
our subscription list. His recent defection was roughly balanced by a new subscription
from the reference library of a Wall Street investment house.
