Word: polks
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...Bureau of the Census, which fans out across the land every ten years to poll every living American, may well be the biggest official collector of statistics in the world. But a family-owned firm, R. L. Polk & Co. of Detroit, probably stands as the No. 1 private data gathering outfit. It regularly touches the lives of some 100 million Americans-even if only a small fraction of them know the company by name...
...Memory Drum. The company has a long tradition of statistical work, reaching back to horse-and-bug-gy days. The railroad had just pushed across Michigan when a young New Jerseyan named Ralph Lane Polk arrived in Detroit to seek his fortune peddling various patent medicines. He found that the Iron Horse, steaming along at speeds of 40 m.p.h., had changed the world of traveling salesmen, enabling them to visit merchants in several towns in one day. Polk compiled a Gazeteer for Michigan in 1870, listing the names and addresses of shopkeepers within walking distance of railroad depots...
...reason of various arrangements with all 50 states (in most cases, Polk pays for what it gets), Polk is able to tap the great wealth of information ac cumulated in car-licensing bureaus. As a result, it is the only central source of nationwide car registration, keeping track of all 100 million vehicles on the road. Although automakers obviously know how many cars they produce, Polk supplies the figures on actual sales. It also traces down for the carmakers the owners of autos that have been re called for repairs...
Beyond all that, Polk is a leader in publishing city directories and listing every person over 18 in every house hold in 1,400 cities by name, occupation, sex, and ownership or rental situation. From this enormous mass of information, the company is able to offer any paying customer an increasing variety of mailing lists, market research and area studies. Currently it rents names and particulars at the annual rate of $60 million...
...every time a recall campaign is launched, certified letters go out to all owners of suspect cars. A few weeks later, a second batch of certified letters is sent to all those who have not responded. After that, the quest is turned over to Detroit's R. L. Polk & Co., which keeps track of car registrations across the country. Polk thereupon sets out to trace nonanswering owners through serial numbers and licensing bureaus. It goes this far: last year G.M. and Polk, toward the end of an Oldsmobile cam paign, narrowed the field of unaccounted-for cars to three...