Saddened Socialists

"If we get 1,000,000 votes," said Norman Thomas. Socialist candidate for President, on election day last week, "we will be moderately encouraged. Every vote over 1.500,000 will be decidedly encouraging. But every vote over 2,000,000 will be cause for tremendous jubilation." When most of the returns had trickled in. Candidate Thomas sadly discovered that he did not even have cause to be "moderately encouraged." Estimated "conservatively " the party believed it had polled 600,000 votes. 1.5%; of all votes cast.

Greatest number of Socialist votes ever polled in the U. S. was 919,799 for Eugene Victor Debs in 1920.

Reasons advanced for Candidate Thomas' failure to receive the 2,000,000 ballots indicated by The Literary Digest straw poll: the "protest vote" went almost entirely to Roosevelt; "parlor" Socialists, reached through the straw poll (automobile & telephone owners), are relatively more numerous than "proletarian" Socialists.

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