ABSTRACT
During the 1950s, a climate of political intolerance existed in the United States. The many scholarly analyses of the American security programs have pointed out inadequacies in the criteria and legal procedures employed, and have documented the cases of injury and injustice to individuals in government and teaching. Stouffer's prime finding, the widespread intolerance in the public, leads one to develop certain models of the way intolerance must be distributed within a population for it to generate maximum fear. A comparative national study can provide some test of such factors. And the comparison with England commends itself as an almost model experiment. A climate of political intolerance is a problem of deep concern, for it may generate in society an atmosphere of fear and distrust. The blemishes on the English record, which we normally forget, suggest too that there may be something arbitrary in the sampling procedure used to support such theories about American intolerance.
