CAMPAIGN: Money, Money, Money

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Said Socialist Nominee Norman Thomas who happened to be in Philadelphia next day: "It seems incredible that 1,300 people would pay $100 for a $2.50 dinner to listen to Jim Farley and watch him eat. I paid 2¢ for a newspaper this morning and saw a picture of Farley eating -that was enough for me!"

Radio, etc The high cost of campaigning this year is due in part simply to big ger and better expenditures on the same old things for which money has been spent for years. Something new in big campaign costs is radio. Such a minor party as the Communists will have a total broadcasting bill of $35,000 with National Broadcasting alone. The same firm announced that the Republican National Committee had up to last week spent $265,000 for use of its networks, and the Democratic National Committee -which had the advantage ear lier in the campaign of "free air" for sev eral of the President's "non-political" speeches -had spent $165,000. By the time Alf Landon makes his final broadcast from 10 p. m. to 11 p. m. on election eve the Republicans will have incurred an additional NBC bill of $90.000. And when Franklin Roosevelt gets in his last verbal licks an hour later, the Democratic NBC bill will have risen another $65,000.

Columbia Broadcasting System declined to make public the amounts of its bills for political broadcasting but the grand total of the two big systems and their smaller competitors will probably be between $1,500,000 and $2,000,000. It will not be surprising if the Republican expenditures for the entire campaign run over $7,500,000, if Democratic expenditures run about $5,000,000. Many a voter may feel that this is a lot of money to spend on a campaign. It is spent, however, to pick a President who will last four years, a Congress which will last two years. But the total cost of the campaign for both major parties would not run the U. S. Government today for 24 hours.