Our cartoon survey: an official report

OUR cartoon survey asked readers for their opinions on what caused the recent stock market crash. Hundreds were returned. We are overjoyed to report that no conclusion whatever can be reached from the response, which means that our readers are among the most erudite in the world. They are as confused as the most learned of today's practicing economists and scholars. Responses tended to favor a multiplicity of causes, a confluence of various deficits and personalities. To determine the most probable case we resorted to the law of scientific self-distribution.

All of the responses were tossed over a bridge on the Massachusetts Turnpike. The one carried the farthest wound up in Truth or Consequences, N.M., on the windshield of a bus. It said that the crash was caused by greed, the same thing that made the market go up. This alarming fact was transmitted to the editors with a request to stop the presses. They said they couldn't stop the presses but agreed to slow them down a little.

A reader from Canada found a reason in a statement from his grandmother. ``Every tub's gotta sit on its own bottom,'' she said. We don't know what this means exactly, but it's got a sort of pawky wisdom and clunky obviousness that inspires confidence. Politicians, take note.