WHAT IT COST.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 302, 21 December 1932, Page 10

WHAT IT COST.

THE U.S. ELECTION. EXPENSIVE PRESIDENTS. A TEN MIIXION BOIXAR BILL. (By EDWIN S. McINTOSH, in the New York "Herald Tribune.") Laet spring in Boston Alfred E. Smith was addressing a Democratic dinner as a part of his party's effort to raise campaign funds in preparation for the present election. He said: "It takes money! It takes money! You can't make anything in the world move to-day without financing it!" • The most expensive Presidential candidate the Democrats ever had knew what he was talking about. The Democratic National Committee in 1928 had spent upward of 3,500,000 dollars in an effort to elect him, with some more thrown in for Congressional and Senatorial campaigns throughout the country. The Republicans had spent a similar amount of money to send President Hoover to the White House, with even more chucked into the pot for subsidiary ballots. A roughly-recapitulated estimate of the 1928 campaign shows that the two major parties spent approximately 17,000,000 dollars on their combined campaigns, affecting in one way or another the prospective national administration. In the last 65 years the dominant ■parties have spent approximately 65,000;OO0 dollars to elect 15 presidents. That does not take into account the cost of party organisation maintenance between elections, which lately has been an increasing item of expense. The deluge of money poured into Presidential campaigns did not start until after the Civil War. Even then its acceleration was moderate, but once the spending policy got its head it ran wild. What Lincoln Cost. In 1860 the Republican National Committee got along on 100,000 dollars for the election of Abraham Lincoln. Twelve yeare afterward it cost only 250,000 dollars to elect General Grant for a second term. The first election in which nearly a million dollars was dumped into the vote-making hopper by each of the big parties was in 1876, during the close and bitter struggle between Hayes and Tilden. In that campaign the Republican outlay reached the unprecedented total of 950,000 dollars. The Democrats also set their first .major record aa spenders by backing Tilden. with only 50,000 dollars less than their rivals put op the table for Hayes. The milliondollar mark was topped in the next election, in 1880, when the Republicans poured the then enormous sum of 1,100,000 dollars into the election of Garfield. ■ ' . \ I

Four years ago, due largely to ,a wealthy coterie gathered around Governor Smith, and to John J. Raskob in particular, the Democrats had a campaign chest and credit which enabled them to match the Republicans dollar for dollar. The two national committees spent about 3,500,000 dollars, each. The Republicans came out of that campaign, however, with a surplus of some 300,000 dollars, while the Democrate went deeply into the red eide of the ledger: A deficit of nearly 800,000 dollars, a sum exceeding all the money the Republican National Committee was able to lay hands on for the Taft campaign in 1012, has not yet been paid in full.

Early in this year's campaign Joseph R. Nutt, treasurer of the Republican National Committee, announced the intention of trying to hold expenses in the Presidential campaign down to 1,500,000 dollars. At about the same time Frank C. Walker, treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, made a similar announcement. Round About 16,000,000-Dollars. The limitation of 1,500,000 for. each party was" based primarily upon the maximum amount of money the party leaders thought they could raise. It is, of course, likely, that during the strategic days at the end of the campaign neither party was able to hold itself within that budget. It would not be at all surprising if the combined outlay of the two national committees ran to , nearly 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 dollars. It is not to be expected that the totals have run as high as the expenses of four years ago, but it. is likely that an accounting will show that around 10,000,000 was disbursed from national and State party treasuries. The reports filed up to October showed the Democrats had expended 926,208 dollars and the Republicans 1,454,179 dollars through their national committees. That did not take into account State, expenditures which ordinarily come in large part from national committee pocketbooke.

The basis of this expense is the enormity of our national territory and its huge population. The election of 1928 brought out 36,724,823 persons who voted for a candidate for President. When it is considered that these millions must be reached through forty-eight States, in a country 3000 miles across, the proportions of the problem become obvious.

'The 1928 campaign inaugurated the general use of radio broadcasting as a means of disseminating political propaganda. Almost overnight radio has become the largest item of expense in a Presidential contest.

A national hook-up over either of the two major broadcasting systems represents a cost of 15,000 dollars an hour. State and sectional broadcasts, of course, cost in proportion. Each party spent close to 1.000.000 dollars for radio four years ago. Tliq party budget-makers exerted desperate efforts to hold that item down in the recent campaign; each tentatively appropriated between 800,000 dollars and 1,000,000 dollars as the lowest figure which would accommodate their most economical needs. But radio is a most voracious nibblcr at the party poeketbook. No unanticipated attack

can be made by a radio campaign orator without its unanticipated counter-attack and its unanticipated cost.

The item- of radio alone in this campaign cost the Republican party at least ten times as much as it spent to elect Lincoln. Its bill for 1928 was greater than the entire national committee budget in 1912. Seventeen Cents Per Vote. Some of the more spectacular campaign activities with which the public is most familiar are not as expensive as might be imagined. A Presidential condidate can barnstorm the country from coast to coast in a special train for about 30,000 dollars. Governors, United States Senators, Representatives in Congress and Chautauqua orators, who constitute the sideshows of a stumping campaign, customarily pay their own expenses or have them paid by local communities. A national convention usually costs less than 90,000 dollars, but the two Chicago shows this year ran up to about 150,000 dollars apiece. That expense, though, is borne by the convention city. Both parties approached this cam-' paign with a deficit. The' Democratic National Committee's quarterly report to the House last March ehowed the party owing 780,000 dollars. The large surplus which the Republicans possessed at the jend of the 1928 campaign had vanished, and that party's treasury was 9000 dollars in the hole. The next report to Congress will probably ehow..both with deficits. Regardless of how much is spent, the winner usually finds it comparatively easy to balance the books, but the%loser usually has to struggle along until the dawn of the next campaign. The sums spent by the dominant parties in a Presidential election are staggering enough without taking into consideration the expenditures of the Socialists, the Farmer-Labourites, the Communists and such outfits as the AntiSaloon League and the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and the Governmental cost of the establishment and operation of election machinery. On the whole, however, modern increases in campaign costs seem merely to have been proportionate, to the country's voting strength. The 100,000 dollars which the Republics s spent to elect Abraham Lincoln in 1860 figures out at about 18 cents a vote. The 3,500,000 dollars which the Republicans devoted exclusively to the Presidential campaign of Mr. Hoover in 1928 conies to 17 cents.