Word: roper
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Died. Elmo Roper, 10, dean of modern political pollsters; in Norwalk, Conn. Roper first realized the value of polls in the late 1920s, when he became an ace clock salesman by sampling the tastes of his customers. He co-founded a New York market-research firm in 1933 and then became the first pollster to adapt scientific sampling techniques in forecasting an election; he predicted F.D.R.'s 1936 plurality within one percentage point of the popular vote. The Literary Digest-then the big gun of polling-picked Alf Landon as the winner. Though he conducted polls for FORTUNE...
...Roper: So now you'd give the Devil himself benefit...
...Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that...
...More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned on you-where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast-man's laws, not God's-and if you cut them down-and you're just the man to do it-d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then...
...order to carve up the faces of their Harvard opponents. The editors intended it to be amusing, and were amused Princeton partisans, who as a rule seemed to take things rather seriously, were not. Nor were they amused by a Lampoon story claiming that Princeton coach W. W. Roper had died. "I think Princeton took it pretty hard, pretty hard," offered Carroll F. Getchell this week. Getchell was athletics business manager at the time...