NATURALLY it is possible to make a rough estimate only of the amount
of attention people give each day to informing themselves about public
affairs. Yet it is interesting that three estimates that I have
examined agree tolerably well, though they were made at different
times, in different places, and by different methods. [Footnote: July,
1900. D. F. Wilcox, _The American Newspaper: A Study in Social
Psychology_, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, vol. xvi, p. 56. (The statistical tables are reproduced in
James Edward Rogers, _The American Newspaper_.)

1916 (?) W. D. Scott, _The Psychology of Advertising_, pp.
226-248. See also Henry Foster Adams, _Advertising and its Mental
Laws_, Ch. IV.

1920 _Newspaper Reading Habits of College Students_, by Prof.
George Burton Hotchkiss and Richard B. Franken, published by the
Association of National Advertisers, Inc., 15 East 26th Street, New
York City.]

A questionnaire was sent by Hotchkiss and Franken to 1761 men and
women college students in New York City, and answers came from all but
a few. Scott used a questionnaire on four thousand prominent business
and professional men in Chicago and received replies from twenty-three
hundred. Between seventy and seventy-five percent of all those who
replied to either inquiry thought they spent a quarter of an hour a
day reading newspapers. Only four percent of the Chicago group guessed
at less than this and twenty-five percent guessed at more. Among the
New Yorkers a little over eight percent figured their newspaper
reading at less than fifteen minutes, and seventeen and a half at