Expanding Chests

Only at Christmas time do U. S. hearts beat more charitably than in the week before Thanksgiving. Last week shrewd charitarians throughout the land were beginning their greatest efforts to fill the Community Chests in which many a town and city lumps funds for all its private charities. Few campaigns lacked the indispensable prestige of at least one Big Name.

In Detroit dynamic President Roy Chapin of Hudson Motor Car Co. had helped to raise $1,730,000. three-quarters of a million short of the goal but around $100,000 over last year's total. Another great salesman, Adman Albert D. Lasker, was using his skill to lure $3,000,000 out of Chicago pockets. With the same thunderous eloquence with which he nominated Herbert Hoover for President in 1932, beetle-browed Lawyer Joseph Scott whipped Los Angeles on toward a precise $3,094,805. Active patron of Philadelphia's campaign for $3,752,000 was onetime Senator George Wharton Pepper. Milwaukee wanted $1,113,248 and big, hearty President Michael Joseph Cleary of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. was out to see that it got it. Johns Hopkins' President Joseph Sweetman Ames kept after citizens of Baltimore for the last $150,000 of a set $1,150,000. No Community Chest has New York City but Banker James Gillespie Blaine and his Citizens Family Welfare Committee sought $2.000,000 for a dozen or so family welfare agencies.

By last week's end Community Chest contributions for the nation as a whole averaged 1% above last year's totals, were within 10% of those in 1929. But this year more than ever canvassers have met the stock protest: "Why should I give to private charity when I'm being taxed for government relief?" Stock answer: The Government supplies only life's bare necessities. On private charity still depend such important extras as character-building and leisure-time services, neighborhood centres, camps, guidance clinics, health bureaus.

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