For Mothers & Fathers

One day last week Dr. Clinton Wunder of Los Angeles swept aside all workaday objections to the Townsend Plan. "We believe that God is on our side," cried he, "and with God all things are possible."

"Amen! Amen!" answered many & many a man and woman who, passionately convinced that it would be possible to pay every U. S. citizen over 60 pension of $200 per month (TIME, Jan. 14), had traveled to Chicago for the first national convention of the Townsend Clubs.

Fifty chartered busses rolled in from Omaha, 40 from Denver. Two special trains brought delegates from California, one from Florida. With some 6,000 delegates from every corner of the land, they swarmed into Chicago's huge Stevens Hotel, thrust $2 registration fees across the counters of four booths, got gilded medals hung on blue badges. One thousand members of the new Townsend Legion, who pay $1 per month special dues, were distinguished from ordinary 10-c--per-month dues-payers by red badges. The club tags and State ribbons, which everybody wore, made it easy to get acquainted.

"We don't need a New Deal, but a New Deck," bubbled Delegate Ralph Higgins of Seattle. "That New Deck is the Townsend Plan."

"The Social Security Act is utterly inadequate and cruelly unjust," cried Washington's State Treasurer Otto Case. "The Townsend Plan will speed the return of prosperity. . . ."

"No power on earth can stop the Townsend Plan," boomed Washington's Representative Martin Smith.

"Just as Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation," throbbed Negro Delegate W. H. Jackson of Indianapolis, "Dr. Townsend will sign the proclamation setting the industrial slaves free." Happy were Townsendites to be once more in the news. "Oh, yes, some think we are dead," barked National Secretary Robert E. Clements, "but look around you at the corpses here assembled and count them. Do we look dead to us? No undertaker will find business here!"

Less than two-thirds of the delegates were over 60, for the Townsend Plan also appeals to young citizens with parents or other aged relatives to support, but to impartial eyes Secretary Clements' audience seemed as likely a collection of prospects as an undertaker could find outside Old Folks Home. Nonetheless their numbers and zeal served notice that the Townsend dream still lived, warned Congressmen to expect another wave of letters and petitions when they reconvene in January. The convention also introduced to the nation the man who, out of good Dr. Francis E. Townsend's misty imaginings, has built a rich & potent political organization which fills Eastern politicians with foreboding, Western politicians with genuine alarm.

Messiah. A painting of Dr. Townsend stood last week at the head of the stairway to the Stevens' Grand Ballroom and pictures of him sold fast at 50-c- apiece. With the pleasant-faced little woman who was a widow with seven children when he married her, the gaunt, grey, gentle one-time country doctor moved among his followers receiving the reverence accorded an authentic Messiah. He it was who first had the gleam which promised to give old people ease, young people jobs, drive poverty from the land forever. Since early last summer he and Mrs. Townsend traveling mostly by airplane, have been following that gleam up & down the West Scheduled to make two speeches on one July day, he delivered seven when great crowds blocked the highway between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. For six August days m the State of Washington, 20,000 listeners per day turned out to hear his gospel of salvation. In Portland, Ore. he preached to 60,000.

Buoyant with faith, the soft-voiced 68-year-oldster opened the convention last week by crying to his disciples: "For every hundred delegates here assembled today a million prayers go up to the God of Justice that our efforts in this convention may not tail. We dare not fail. Our Plan is the sole id only hope of a confused and distracted nation. We have become an avalanche ol political power that no derision, no ridicule, no conspiracy of silence can stem."

Turning to less exalted matters Dr Townsend mentioned the need of "a half million dollars per month" to carry the gospel to the East & South, offered his followers a homely example: "Mrs. Townsend and I ... meet our club dues liberally by the simple expedient of refusing to part with any pennies that come into our possession until 'dues day' and then turn in our collection of red money. Thus for this month more than 200 Indianhead coins have come into our possession."

Finally Dr. Townsend arrived at a matter which has lately rankled deep in his generous heart: "And now, my friends let ; admonish you against insidious and hurtful propaganda that may arise within your ranks. The very rapid development to our organization ... has made it inevitable that inefficiency and selfish ambition and even rank dishonesty should find lodgment among us Some [local] leaders

have become vindictive and unscrupulous in sowing the seeds of distrust and false accusations against our national leaders

Thus did good Dr. Townsend brave thick-flying charges that he and National Secretary Clements have turned their great dream into a pious racket

"Chief." Robert Earl Clements was born 40 years ago in Amarillo Tex., son of a rich cattleman. After high school in Fort Worth, he migrated to Long Beach Calif, set up in the real estate business, prospered. His fortune reached a peak of $750,000 in 1929, slumped with Depression. Realtor Clements was not much impressed when one of his salesmen, an ineffectual old man who had been a Long Beach health officer, began talking to him about a plan to banish depressions for good. But after a while he took interest spent a few weeks brushing up on economics and statistics in the public library. Then he sat down with Dr. Townsend to reduce the old man's vision to a concrete formula and program.

Last week in Chicago, it was wedge-faced, cold-eyed, hard-driving Co-Founder

Clements who Townsend organizers called Chief and credited with being the man who made Old Age Revolving Pensions, Ltd. into a functioning national organization. It was in his $13-per-day Stevens suite (1222a), not in the Town-Bends modest $7-per-day room, that the real business of the convention was transacted. Ever at his side was his pretty redhaired, 28-year-old wife Thelma, one-time stenographer, whom he married last year. Though he still owns land in 7 States, Mrs. Clements says her husband is now only moderately well-to-do. But they can afford to drive a Lincoln automobile, criss-cross the country by airplane keep up an eight-room apartment. Early this year three Denver Townsendites returned from a mission to Washington to proclaim that Founders Townsend and Clements were not really trying to get their scheme through Congress were simply staging enough of a show to keep the money coming in. Frank Peterson, onetime Townsend publicity director charged that the Clementses' high living was entirely paid for by the pennies & nickels of deluded oldsters. He said Founders Townsend and Clements were netting $2,000 per week from the Townsend Weekly, 5-c- sheetlet which now reports 220,000 circulation. Swiftly revolt broke out in Colorado, Oregon, Minnesota and California Townsend Clubs, with ugly charges of dictatorship and mishandling of funds.

Last week Secretary Clements met these charges with an auditor's report on Townsend finances since July 1934, before which date he said the organization had collected only the "pitiful sum" of $6,850.83. Receipts from dues, donations sale of official literature and paraphernalia were $636,803.21. Expenditures for salaries, advertising, equipment, etc., were $585,446.42. Dr. Townsend received $7,532.75--a salary of $50 per week plus "about $74 a week" for expenses. On the same basis Clements got $7,517.22.

"It has been charged," roared Secretary Clements, "that Dr. Townsend pocketed $600 of this money. It is a damnable lie Every cent has been accounted for."

Overlooked was the fact that, on arriving in Chicago, Dr. Townsend had told newshawks that his organization had taken m $1,200,000 to date. Publicity Director Boyd Gurley, one-man brain trust of the Townsend outfit, smoothed things over by declaring that the movement had grown so fast its directors really did not know where they stood. Onetime editor of the Kansas City Post and managing editor of the Indianapolis Times, for which he won the 1929 Pulitzer Prize "for the most disinterested and meritorious public service." Braintruster Gurley writes most of the Townsend Weekly, bats out inspirational speeches for Founders Townsend and Clements on demand.

Votes for 1936. Obediently voting against political alliances or a third party the delegates last week granted Leader-lownsend and Clements full power to say which "friends" should get Townsend support and votes in 1936. The leaders also tightened their financial reins by getting a vote against sale of "unauthorized" literature, a vote to assess each Townsend Club of per month per member whether individual members pay up or not. Town-Clubs now number some 4,000 in 48 States, average 500 members apiece.

On Sunday the 6,000 delegates repaired with some 3,000 interested Chicagoans to the Stockyards Pavilion for a bang-up convention finish. Millions of other optimstic oldsters were supposed to be listening by radio as, all sordid bickering aside Secretary Clements lifted the Townsend Plan once more to its original lofty plane: "I see a man and woman both past three score and ten, sitting in a humble home out in the Far West. Depression has exacted its cruel toll from them after a life ot good citizenship and pioneering in the Their chief asset now and only compensation is that they have contributed to their country four children raised to manhood and womanhood. Thank God it is my privilege to save those two--my own Mother and Father, and devote myself to the saving of all other mothers and fathers. . . ."

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