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In Manhattan's echoing Pennsylvania Station, some 2,000 young Socialists, mostly college students, massed one morning last week to welcome home their political hero. Their placards and banners joggled up & down as they lustily sang the "Internationale." When they spied a tall, handsome, white-haired man coming from his train, they rushed forward and engulfed him with their enthusiasm. It was Norman Mattoon Thomas, Socialist nominee for President, back from a five-week transcontinental campaign tour. Nominee Thomas had traveled 10,000 miles through 38 States, made 150 speeches. His campaign slogan: "Repeal Unemployment." His remedy: a $10,000,000,000 bond issue for direct Federal relief. Typical Thomas speech:

"It's not Washington but Wall Street that's ruined us. It's not Mr. Hoover who made the Depression. He isn't big enough. It's the breakdown of the capitalist system itself. . . . No budget is balanced that ignores the desperate plight of 13,000,000 unemployed."

Socialist Thomas expects 2,000,000 popular votes next week. If he gets them he will double the party record set by Eugene Victor Debs in 1920. The Literary Digest presidential poll indicates that he will receive slightly less than 5% of the 35 to 40 million votes to be cast Nov. 8. Last week he carried straw polls against Hoover, Roosevelt and Foster at Columbia and New York Universities. Socialist electors will appear on the ballots of 44 States. Last week they were ruled off in Oklahoma because the party had failed to poll a legal sufficiency at the last election. A new Florida election law makes room for only two parties. Also blank of Socialist electors are Nevada and Idaho ballots.

A shrewd observer, Nominee Thomas reported thus on his travels: "There's a strong Roosevelt sentiment throughout the country but it's based less on affection for or confidence in him than hatred of his opponent. There is more of this than I ever saw in American political life. All this protest vote will go to Roosevelt and not to me. But I've never yet been able to find a real Roosevelt rooter except perhaps Josephus Daniels who says he raised him. The Roosevelt people are those who put cotton in their ears so they can't hear him. . . . Prohibition isn't one-tenth the issue it was. Too many people are hungry for that. . . . Hoover's speeches have helped him a little but not a great deal. . . ."

Day later Nominee Thomas went stumping to Philadelphia. There for the first time in the campaign he met his running mate, James Hudson Maurer, old-time Socialist, who says of the capitalist system: "It's a nasty stinking wreck." Socialist Thomas was refused a permit to speak in Reyburn Plaza across from City Hall where President Hoover was to make an address three days later, on the ground that it was reserved for "rest and recreation." Officials explained that the President would not need a permit because his appearance would be "a friendly visit of historical importance." Nominee Thomas without a permit addressed 4,000 in the plaza: "This is not a political meeting, but a class in history. Next Monday your Superintendent of Public Education, William S. Vare, will introduce a distinguished historian, Herbert Clark Hoover, who will discuss wild life on the Rapidan.

"He may even tell you how he stayed up all night saving the Republican party and, incidentally, Charley Dawes's bank. However, the Park Commission rules that the tales are both recreational and restful."

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