The D. A. R. Black List

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HE President-General of the D. A. R. has stood sponsor for an amazing list of people and organizations to be barred from a hearing by chapters of this historic organization. This list is generous enough to include both the Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A. It takes in the Federal Children's Bureau and the Foreign Policy Association. It includes David Starr Jordan, William Allen White, Felix Frankfurter, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise.

Many Daughters of the American Revolution are wondering why this list was compiled and why their President-General thinks they are not mature enough to judge for themselves the type of speakers they would like to hear. It appears that the President-General has fallen under the spell of the witchhunting gentry who were so alarmed lest America turn Communist after the World War.

It is William Allen White who suggested that if the ancestors of the present members of the D. A. R. had adopted the present policy of the President-General, the Society today would have been known as the Daughters of American Tories, instead of Daughters of the American Revolution.

Apparently, there are still some sections of the United States which cling to the old doctrines of free speech. We might remind the D. A. R.'s that when ex-Senator Wadsworth, who is an emphatic wet and a pronounced anti-suffragist, visited Honolulu this last winter, he was cordially invited to address the League of Women Voters. We think that the D. A. R. can at least afford to listen to that terrible radical, William Allen White, without loss to its essential Americanism.

Immortality

O the question of immortality there are three familiar attitudes. One is the attitude of the dogmatist; another is the attitude of the scientist; the third is the attitude of the man of faith.

For the dogmatist the question is settled by what he regards as ultimate authority. He may find that authority in a Church. He may find it in a Book. He may even find it in what he regards as the historic sayings of a Man. In any case, his mind reposes on what it accepts as an external and sure foundation.

For the scientist, as a scientist, the question is referred to the evidence of the senses. If he finds the evidence favorable, he accepts immortality as an established fact; if unfavorable, as a myth; if neither favorable nor unfavorable, as a hypothesis to be neither accepted nor rejected.

For the man of faith, immortality is not a question of evidence or a question of authority. It is rather a part of that world of ideas and of life, like the idea of beauty or of truth or of right, that cannot depend upon anything external

whether it be of authority or of evidence, but is a part of one's self. Evidence may support it or not; dogma may truly express it or may misrepresent it; but neither evidence nor dogma can of itself either establish or disestablish it.

These three attitudes are to be found in a group of statements about personal immortality published on Easter Day in the New York "Times." Dr. Manning, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, Dr. Ryan, Roman Catholic professor, and Frank P. Walsh, Roman Catholic layman, and others rest their belief ultimately on authority. Clarence Darrow, the famous attorney, John Dewey, the well-known philosopher, W. E. B. Du Bois, the eminent Negro leader, take the view of the scientist, the first regarding the evidence as against the idea, the other two taking the position of agnosticism. But others, among them the scientific layman Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan, the distinguished physicist, and Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the eminent clergyman, regard immortality through other eyes than those of evidence or dogma. Man, says Dr. Millikan, is incurably religious, because "every one who reflects at all must have conceptions of the world which go beyond the field of science." In this sense immortality is not merely the survival of bodily death, it is rather an attitude toward life and a way of living.

Alice Stays in Wonderland

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AST week, at Sotheby's auction rooms, in London, a woman, old and poor and alone since her sons were killed in the war, sat and watched the sale of a precious manuscript. It was the manuscript of "Alice in Wonderland." The old woman, the seller, was Mrs. Hargreaves, the original Alice to whom the story was told and the manuscript given by Lewis Carroll "in memory of a summer day," some sixty-five years ago. The buyer was Dr. Rosenbach, purveyor to American collectors. To different people the manuscript means different things. Chirographers may find in the formation of its letters and the slant of lines some indications of the author's character. To psychologists corrections in the text may hint of how his mind worked. For the collector it is another curious stamp, another rare bird's-nest. To Alice Hargreaves herself the folded papers were the tangible evidence that a summer day, years ago, had been-had been, like her home and her sons and her youth; that it was not the figment of a lonely heart. To us they are only the christening dress of an immortal child. The manuscript of "Alice in Wonderland" may go to a gracious oblivion in the glass cases of the British Museum or behind the carved doors of a millionaire's cupboard; but neither public nor private hands can be laid upon Alice. She is safe, out of reach in a permanent wonderland. The door is not locked. It is a little door, and to go through it you have only to find the bottle labeled "DRINK ME.” But take care; when you have drunk, when you are small enough to get through, you will find that there is deep water about your knees. To reach wonderland you must swim through a flood of your own

tears.

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N the United States today there are slightly over 700 broadcasting stations, nearly 10,000,000 receiving sets, and a total radio audience estimated at 30,000,000 to 50,000,000. In all the rest of the world there are but 431 stations. Only eight years ago, in 1920, there was only one station, KDKA of Pittsburgh, and a few thousand sputtering, head-phone amateur sets. Who pays for all this American broadcasting? In the United States, advertisers pay, directly or indirectly, for the great bulk of radio broadcasting. In England and on the Continent, a license tax upon every receiving set pays the cost of radio broadcasting. The Government collects the tax, controls the air with few noninterfering stations, and arranges the programs.

Broadly speaking, an inquiry into radio advertising is synonymous with an inquiry into the whole subject of American broadcasting.

In January, 1928, the Dodge Brothers brought out a new Victory model, and heralded its birth with a Victory Hour on the radio. That hour cost the motor

manufacturers $60,000, or $1,000 a minute. Will Rogers in his California home, Paul Whiteman and his band in New York, Fred and Dorothy Stone in a Chicago theatre dressing-room, and Al Jolson in a New Orleans hotel-at the four boundaries of the Republic, west, east, north, and south-all contributed to one unified program, and their voices blended in the biggest hook-up ever attempted. The four artists split a purse of $25,000, with Al Jolson-grumbling all the way to New Orleans, where he did not want to go-receiving $7,500. Forty-seven stations were linked by 20,000 miles of special telephone wire, and, at an engineering cost of $35,000, simultaneously delivered the program to the whole country. David Belasco sent the following telegram to Edward L. Bernays, who, as counsel on public relations for the Dodge Brothers, had initiated the gigantic hook-up:

As a sales and merchandising event the announcement of the Dodge Brothers Victory Six car from fortyseven radio stations is an achievement which beggars the imagination. The realization that some 30,000,000 people may be approached at the same time about the same proposition,

By STUART CHASE

Stuart Chase asks and answers the question "What do manufacturers get when they pay $1,000 a minute for a National hook-up?" He was, with Mr. F. J. Schlink, a joint author of "Your Money's Worth: A Study in the Waste of the Consumer's Dollar." His trenchant study of the advertising problem serves as a background for this article on advertising and radio.

whether it be concerned with merchandising, amusements, politics, education or religion, is an accomplishment which only the thought of this age could conceive. I am inclined to sit in admiration of the mind or minds which could vision such a stupendous undertaking.

Some of us are not only inclined to sit, we are inclined to complete prostration. The event was unparalleled. The only question remaining is whether the Dodge Brothers sold any more cars by virtue of it. But of that more anon.

The total outlay by the American public for sets and accessories is now $550,000,000 year. In 1922 it was $60,000,000—a ninefold increase in six years. But the saturation point is far from reached. Only about thirty per cent of American homes are as yet equipped with radios, in contrast with forty per cent equipped with phonographs, over sixty per cent with telephones, and sixty-seven per cent with motor cars-figured on the basis of dividing total machines by total families.

In 1922 the Telephone Company established WEAF in New York. In the same year the art was greatly expanded by employing telephone wires to carry outside events into the station, where they were then put upon the air. Before, they were then put upon the air. Before, the speaker or the singer had perforce to go to the studio. Now the studio could go to the artist. Soon after, telephone wires were employed not only to hook in the artist, but to hook up separate stations, and thus release an identical program at widely separated points. As the maximum normal good delivery range of the most powerful (50,000 watt) station is only between 100 and 300 miles, de

pending on the character of the territory covered, it is obvious that the hook-up technique was invaluable in giving a costly or unique program the widest distribution at the lowest operating outlay. Thus momentous political speeches, prize-fights, football games, symphony concerts, the birth pangs of Victory models, could be delivered clearly and well all over the country at one fell

swoop.

TH

HE lion among the hook-up circuits is the National Broadcasting Company. It operates one station of its own, WEAF, and two stations owned by the Radio Corporation, WJZ and WRY: and daily sends out programs to nearly fifty more stations, using 9,300 miles of special wire. These stations, further more, are combined into the Red Circuit and the Blue Circuit, each with special programs. The company is owned jointly by the General Electric Company, the Radio Corporation, and the Westinghouse Electric Company, who between them make perhaps fifteen per cent of all radio sets and accessories. There are about 500 persons on its pay roll; 14 studios are operated in New York, Chicago, Washington, and San Francisco; each month it brings 5,000 faces to its microphones, and each month it receives (and diligently classifies for advertising purposes) 85,000 letters from its far-flung audiences. It is housed in a great office building in New York, where on the floors devoted to the purpose astounded visitor may see high-vaulted studios furnished in a style to inspire envy in Mr. Ziegfeld's heart, with batteries of colored lights to play upon the emotions of the performing artists: he may see magnificent attendants in the boldest and bluest of uniforms; a lordly sales department with rows of conference rooms and a great many-colored wall chart of the whole hook-up system; a dark cave lined with emerald batteries: a machine for recording automatically the temperature of every study at tenminute intervals; and, most impressive of all, the central engineering room, where the miracle of transforming sound into ether waves is performed and the beautiful, intricate work of linking station to station consummated.

the

The nearest competitor to this com pany is the Columbia Broadcasting

THE

HE total annual cost of radio broad

casting in the United States is probably in the neighborhood of $15,000,000. Mr. M. H. Aylesworth, President of the National Broadcasting Company, estimates the outlay of his company for 1928 at $8,000,000-$3,000,000 for talent and $5,000,000 for technical operation. How is this $15,000,000 costmore or less-to be met? Primarily by advertising. It must be worth enough to somebody, somewhere, to pay the operating outlay. Americans are not distinguished for being in business for

their health.

After KDKA had set the ball rolling in 1920, broadcasting stations, sensing the commercial possibilities, began to sprout up everywhere. They launched upon the ether the virtues of shoes, pickles, tooth powder, undershirts, whatnot, in the most direct and forceful terms. A little music, a good stiff sales talk, a little more music. The motto was: If the magazines can do it, why can't we? They could, and they did. The eager fans, stupefied with the sensation of getting anything even a hiccough out of the air, were ready to listen greedily to whatever might come

WCSH

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WASHINGTON WRC

along. Soap propaganda was as useful as a sermon or a saxophone to a man receiving the signal, testing out superregenerative circuits, fiddling with controls, and trying to improve the reproduction qualities of the home-rigged set. The output of soap and sealing-wax appeals was enormous, but it is to be doubted if it sold much merchandise. Father was too busy twining grapevine aerials and playing with static elimination, to pay much attention to what was actually being said.

ITH the coming of better and bet

WIT

ter equipment, the radio audience began to listen more critically and to attempt some real enjoyment from the content of radio programs. To hear a good concert reft in the middle by a talk on the wholesale grocer's services to the community was not any too enjoyable. The fans began to protest; "punishment" they called it. They demanded more jazz and less punishment; and the big stations began to swing in that direction. The A. and P. Gypsies no longer carried chain-store service chants. They did their stuff, that was all, hoping that the listener would not forget that the A. and P. Company was providing it. Direct advertising has greatly diminished in the leading stations, and indirect, or what is termed "good will" advertising, has taken its place. The ideal aimed at is a single mention of the ad

vertiser's name at the beginning of the program, and one more mention at the end. It remains, by and large, an ideal. But the small fry still cling loyally and vociferously to the knock-down-andYou can still drag-'em-out tradition.

hear any amount of direct advertising by spinning the dials a little, particularly in the morning hours and in the lower wave-lengths.

HE economics of the small station is

THE

at once interesting and precarious. Many of them, of course, are operated in connection with some single institution-a society, a church, a school, a labor group-and so not concerned with commercial advertising, but rather maintaining the station in the interest of their Other own propaganda or message. small stations are run by manufacturers or business men with goods to sell. Rather than pay a commercial station, they prefer to roll their own. small stations are in the straight commercial class, soliciting clients at so much an hour. These clients tend to be small local business men, who like to feel

Other

or better to hear-that they are getting their money's worth, and the station obliges with Finkelstein's jewelry neatly rolled between two spasms of jazz. Mr. Finkelstein hears, approves, and pays. What more can one ask? But his neighbors are mostly listening to the Eveready Hour, where batteries are only mentioned once.

Mr. Edgar Felix, in his excellent book "Using Radio in Sales Promotion," estimates that in the Chicago area, with its 50 stations, fifty per cent of the potential audience of 1,000,000 will be listening to the three leading stations, leaving an average of 12,000 for each of the 47 minor stations. "Making the proper deduction for persons not listening at the particular moment under consideration, even during the best evening hours, these smaller stations do not ordinarily have more than 2,000 to 3,000 listeners. Under the circumstances, advertisers are not justified in paying toll charges or presenting costly programs through such stations." It has been estimated that 50 stations out of the 700 operating today attract ninety per cent of the radio audience, leaving the other 650 stations to get along with ten per cent.

The patent-medicine brethren, however, use the small stations frequently. The American Medical Association has recently collected an exhibit of their art. It appears that the more audacious quacks, having been denied space on the better magazines and newspapers, have

turned to radio to right the balance. Here is John R. Brinkley, who operates KFKB in Milford, Kansas, in the interests of his "rejuvenation" operations. Here is WHT broadcasting the virtues of Salicon, a preparation which the Medical Association laboratory found to be essentially a mixture of 3 grains of aspirin and 2 grains of magnesium carbonate. WJAŻ was recently expounding the renowned Professor Scholder, who could, it was alleged, grow hair on bald heads; but who could not tell the difference between dyed twine and human hair. Over KTNT of Muscatine, Iowa, comes the story of the "Tangley Institute" with its sure-fire cure for varicose veins. WJBT of Chicago has dilated on the marvels of the magical horse collar, I-on-a-co. The Voice of Labor-WCFL -agitates the air with the learned Dr. Percy Lemon Clark, in whose institute of "Santology" it is taught that “acidosis and toxicosis are the two basic causes of all disease;" and also advocates "Restoro," a base imitation of the only genuine magical horse collarthough either may be said to possess "as much therapeutic value as an empty tomato can with a string tied to it."

THE

HE small stations unquestionably have their place in any final solution to the radio problem. They are capable of serving the local community, as no big standardized station can serve it. But as outlets for patent medicines and dubious direct advertising generally they serve no useful function, particularly when, as is so often now the case, they use phonograph records as the basis for transmitting their music. It is even doubtful if they add anything to the revenue of their advertising clients. Meanwhile they tend to clutter up the air and bring about a condition where, according to Felix, two-thirds of all their effort is wasted, to say nothing of the barrage of heterodyne whistling which their presence necessitates. The air is desperately overcrowded at the present time with 700-odd stations, when not over 300 (according to Mr. Carl Dreher) are all that can comfortably operate without heterodyne interference. Furthermore, the excess of stations forces the purchase of 6 and 8 tube sets where 3 or 4 tubes would be adequate, with fewer interfering stations. The excess cost to the consumer is very considerable. The control of the air is in Government hands, but when an attempt is made to close down a pestiferous local station an appeal is taken to the local Congressman, which often preserves it.

An odoriferous pest in northern New Jersey, for instance, is upheld by politicians who think that by saving the life of the station they can secure some free publicity at election time.

TH

trying to make the stations show an operating profit on their own account. And in the process of doing so they are frequently boring their audiences to death. Some products are fairly well adapted to radio advertising. The Har monica Boys can toot their own harmonicas; the United States Playing Card Company can broadcast bridge games with experts playing; the Roxy Theatre can provide a sample of its music; Dow Jones can give stock market reports. But just what connection is there between motor cars and symphony orches tras, between a pair of wisecrackers and candy, and what is radio symbolism for collars, tooth paste, and chewinggum?

HE big stations are in a different category. They are not prone to inflict nearly as much "punishment" in the way of direct advertising matter, but they hope to pay their operating costs from advertising revenues. The National Broadcasting Company is just beginning to show a slim credit balance after having been in the red for years. Relying on advertisers for profits, and not giving the advertiser very much for his money except general "good will," the big stations have to be doubly careful in not offending any client, in playing THE organization of a large commerconsistently safe. This means censorship

of any ideas offensive to manufacturers; it means conservatism, middle-of-theroad policies, reluctance to experiment. They have achieved a formula for showmanship which remains highly tentative; which cannot compare with the commercial technique worked out by the movies and the theatre, but from which they do not dare to depart. Morris Markey summarizes the case: "No way has yet been contrived to send either intimate cleverness or a feeling of splendor over the air, and so the broadcasters have fallen back on churchly dignity. This saves them, frequently, from being banal or ridiculous, but it does not save them from being dull." As the radio audience becomes increasingly critical, this formula fails increasingly to satisfy. It is already under strenuous attack. The Coward Comfort Shoe Company prom'ises us thirty minutes with our great American poets. What does it turn out to be? Readings from Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, and James Whitcomb Riley. Our greatest poet is never mentioned; nor anybody who has written since 1870. This is not showmanship; this is what Wells calls cold mutton fat.

The first large advertisers were radioequipment manufacturers. They had a right to be. The public was their legitimate meat. From one point of view, it is to their interest to pay the whole broadcasting bill of the country. The better the programs, the more sets and accessories they are likely to sell. They do not even need to mention the equip ment industry; the process is automatic. But today all sorts of other, and often irrelevant, products are paying for time on the air, while radio manufacturers who operate broadcasting stations are

cial station is something as follows: The station does a certain amount of broadcasting at its own expense, to es tablish its own good will. Secondly, it sends out programs for advertisers, which the advertiser has himself prepared. Thirdly, it has its own devoted hacks who prepare programs for such advertisers as do not desire to create

their own. The station program is called the "sustaining" one, and the advertiser's program-whether created by him or by the station-the "sponsored" one. It is the hope of every commercial station to eliminate the cost of a sustaining program and to have everything sponsored.

The National Broadcasting Company has at the present time 56 sponsor accounts. These 56 advertisers, it is hoped, will meet the $8,000,000 cost of operations for 1928, and show a small profit as well. Besides the revenue from the sponsor, the head station of a chain collects a fee from all the linked substa tions. But when the Capitol Orchestra or the Roxy Gang goes on the air no money changes hands at all. The sta tion gets its sustaining talent for nothing, and Mr. Roxy gets some free publicity.

An hour's program requires an average of 100 hours of paper work. This means writing out the script for everything everybody is going to say; arranging for artists, rehearsals, special features. Yet for all this diligent paper work, Mr. Felix doubts if one announcer in fifty can pronounce correctly all of the following words: legato, scherzo, allegro, suite, pianist. Mr. Zey Bouck, radio critic of the New York "Sun," hopes, without much confidence, for a program director some day who will know the Intermezzo from the "Jewels of the Madonna" when

he hears it. He prays for anything to get away from "radio Cook's tours and songs of yesteryear." Meanwhile WEAF has had to prepare a list of banned songs, so surcharged had the air become with them. Among the list are "The Road to Mandalay," Rachmaninoff's "Prelude," and the "Melody in F."

knew the Royal Typewriter Company sponsored the first Tunney-Dempsey prize-fight hook-up, and paid $35,000 for it? The only way the distraught company could get its message through at all was by asking the announcerwith some trepidation-to casually mention the fact that some of the noted sports writers around the ringside were

fering from paralysis of initiative, and turning out too much dull, unimaginative hack work. The public will no more stand for direct advertising, in the long run, than it will stand for a guest trying to sell insurance over his host's dinner table. Broadcasting programs are guests in private homes-they are not street billboards or subway newspapers. Broad

and their stupendous hook-ups, the big stations have only the haziest idea of where they are going. Rates on the Red Chain are now $4,740 an hour, and on the Blue Chain $3,200-$10,000 when both are used-but they are subject to change without notice. Station owners are still undecided whether to pay politicians for 1928 campaign speeches or to charge politicians for broadcasting their speeches. No advertiser can get a real appraisal of what his radio expenditure is worth. He will be shown maps, charts, letters, and figures, but no sound techfor

fight with the greatest attention, but I was too excited to have this aside register. I never heard it at all, and I doubt if the overwhelming majority of listeners heard it. One-hundred-thousand-dollar programs are said to be just around the corner, but if I were a manufacturer of washing-machines I would think twice about sinking a hundred grand in elevating a prize-fighter, an actor, or a diva. vating a prize-fighter, an actor, or a diva. Such secure enough publicity in the normal course of events without having to rely on charity.

on the word of those who, like Mr. Felix, have studied the problem most intensively. At best it can create only a vague good will, and no sound method has as yet been worked out for measuring the sales value of that good will. The Happiness Boys are thoroughly enjoyed, but how much candy do they sell? Nobody knows. Thus, from the straight business point of view, it is questionable how far radio advertising is a good investment.

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has yet been evolved. Felix says flatly: "There is at this time no established basis for charges, no real analysis of the relative value of stations and audience, and no definite knowledge of the prospective demand for broadcasting facilities."

The potential advertiser will receive from fly-by-night stations publicity matter to this effect: "Our station is located at the radio center of the United States, being equidistant from both east and west coasts and sufficiently close to the Gulf of Mexico to compensate for poorer reception caused by static. . . . Let us assure you that our station has established an extremely enviable reputation throughout the North American Continent, and to Hawaii and Alaska, for consistent strong signal strength and exceptionally perfect modulation." This sounds well, but, as a matter of fact, the station is normally good for but a fiftymile radius, and only the distance hunters-those who would rather hear a sneeze in Honolulu than a symphony concert in their home town-supply the "enviable reputation."

for letters any more. This makes the collection of the advertiser's sucker lists a far harder task than it used to be. They resent too much talk about the "generosity of the sponsor making this extraordinary program possible." They know well enough that the object is not generosity, but cold dollars and cents. They do not like recipes for mustard dishes in the middle of dance music. The instant the "punishment" makes itself felt, the dial can be twirled and a less annoying station found. They are becoming increasingly shy of prize contests, with their sucker-list implications. In some stations such contests are now tabu. The booklet game, the free-sample game, the retail tie-up game, are not what they used to be.

In brief, the advertiser with his nebulous message of good will is confronted with a stone wall, however much the sales departments of the commercial stations may try and wriggle around the facts. The result is not happy. The public gets a rotten program, the advertiser gets a rotten deal, while the station itself is losing money, or making only a very narrow margin. Worse economics it would be difficult to imagine.

The difficulties of giving the advertiser value for his money are very serious, quite apart from misrepresentations as Digging under the hullabaloo of Victo the size of his audience. When he tory Hours, and Royal Typewriter prizeretains stars on the assumption of furfights, it appears that the broadcasting nishing only the best, the tendency is for industry in America today is in far from the star to swamp him, and his shoes and a healthy condition. It is trying to live sealing wax. He comes off second best on advertising, and being poisoned by in the publicity every time. He cannot it. The little stations are broadcasting very well announce: "The Nestlé So- too much soap and fat reducers—which prano, Galli Curci." Madame would the fans will no longer listen to in paynot stand for it. How many people ing quantities; the big stations are suf

the case is even more dubious. It is admitted that the good-will feature finds its value mainly when applied to goods where "competition is close and where the demarcation in price and quality between rival products is small"-specifically cigarettes, tooth paste, shaving cream, collars, packaged grocery products, cosmetics. Such advertising tells the consumer nothing, but simply attempts to stamp in a trade name, on the principle that "repetition is reputation," with the object of switching him from the Tweedledum brand to the brand of Tweedledee. This makes for over-competition, waste, and social loss. Yet it is radio's chief asset as an advertising device.

It has been estimated that the total cost of broadcasting good radio programs to the entire country from a reasonable number of stations would not exceed one per cent of the advertising bill of the Nation. For my part, I would like to see the Government take over the job on the English license basis, taxing the set owner for his entertainment. If this is too direct a levy, let the radio-equipment manufacturers, through their trade associations, underwrite the cost, charge it to advertising, and collect it painlessly in their tariffs for sets and accessories. Either proposal would banish indiscriminate advertising from a field where it does not belong, clear the air, abolish untold nonsense resulting from attempts to serve two masters, and conceivably make for more experiment new formulæ in programs, and thus for increased pleasure. Certainly it could make programs no worse.