Not Since the Armistice. . . .

People, thousands and thousands of people, more people than there are in Indianapolis and St. Louis and Birmingham, Ala. combined, jam-packed the stone-cliffed canyon of Manhattan's Fifth Avenue for half a day last week. Three out of every ten New Yorkers were there, 2,000,000 strong. They fainted, they cheered, their feet hurt, their clothes got mussed. At 58th Street their sheer bulk bulged through splintering plate glass windows. The Governor's motorcycle escort rode one down. A pack of them upturned a policeman and his screaming horse. There never had been so many people gathered anywhere in the nation since Armistice Day. Nobody in town, not even the blind news dealers and the invalids and sick folk in their beds--for the bands brayed ten solid hours--will soon forget New York's NRA parade.

For hours the side streets around sunny Washington Square were bursting with marchers waiting their turn in line. While they waited many of them visited speakeasies, got tiddledy. There were a quarter-million of them: 20,000 dressmakers, 10,000 brokers & bankers and their clerks, 1,000 barbers, 35,000 city employes, 6,000 cinema workers led by Al Jolson, 5,000 oil workers led by Walter Teagle, metal workers, hatters, florists, waitresses, soda jerkers. Every guild, every trade and calling was on hand to honor the Blue Eagle. that hopeful bird with lightning in his claw.

"Well," said Grover Whalen, local NRAdministrator, just before 2 o'clock, "forward march!"

Up the Avenue chattered a smoky-tailed vanguard of motorcycle police. Out stepped spectacled Major General Dennis E. Nolan, commander of the 2nd Corps Area and Marshal of the parade. Along came Administrator Whalen, who once was Police Commissioner. Behind them, on the parade's lone official float, rode two symbolic beauties, "Miss Liberty" and "Miss NRA," the Misses Elise & Doris Ford of Brooklyn, Howard Chandler Christie's models. When the head of the parade reached the Public Library at 42nd Street, Grover Whalen and General Nolan joined General Hugh Johnson, Governor Lehman of New York and prognathous, bag-jowled Mayor O'Brien on the reviewing platform.

First came the troops, their uniforms a martial palette. Militiamen in grey & white from the "Old Seventh" Regiment; the jist Infantry in blue & white; the 102nd Engineers in scarlet; the 102nd Medical Unit in maroon; the "Old Sixty-Ninth" in blue with green facings; the "Washington Grays" in grey with flashing sabres. Cheerful CCC workers livened their olive drab uniforms with sprigs of hemlock in their caps. Their banner announced: "We Do Our Part For The NRA; We Work In The Woods For $1 A Day."

The city's pressmen, publishers and advertisers had a band led by a dancing Indian in a war bonnet (see p. 50 ). Walter Damrosch was with the radio people; little old Charles Winninger led the actors. Samuel ("Roxy") Rothafel's costumed choristers from Radio City cut capers on the asphalt. Paramount had four imitation Marx Brothers and six Mae Wests. Some Army signalers paused in front of the reviewing stand to fly 50 pigeons back to Washington with greetings to the President. The Stock Exchange crowd had a band of Scotch pipers. The Cotton Exchange people had a band which just played "Dixie."

By dinner time the department store marchers, waving their Blue Eagle placards, were beginning to pass the review point. General Johnson, his hand raised in a continuous Fascist salute, had declared the parade to be "the most marvelous demonstration I have ever seen." Shortly thereafter, when his secretary Frances ("Robbie") Robinson grew ill, he took her home. But Governor Lehman still wore his smile. Grover Whalen kept banging the railing in front of him and singing "Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here." The top hat of fat Mayor O'Brien still flashed its professional greeting, even after he was roundly booed by the Wall Street contingent, angered by the Mayor's new tax program (see p. 43).

The Fifth Avenue street lights, turned amber for the holiday, winked on as darkness fell. The crowds grew thicker. The ticker-tape and torn paper banked in heaps against the curbs. Governor Lehman went off to make a speech. The other reviewers ordered sandwiches and coffee. By this time the parade should have ended, but thousands were yet to come. George Gordon Battle led the lawyers. Life insurance people, office furniture brokers, telegraph and telephone employes with linemen in truck towers followed. The brewers marched past diabolically illuminated by red flares.

Only by subway could you get across town. "It's just one of those things," said tired policemen. People went to the theatre. When they got out they found the parade still going on. Some Chinese waitresses and a group of artificial flower makers tagged the monster procession as it died. Magically the crowds melted. Street cleaners hitched up their belts at midnight as a light rain began to fall.

Many another U. S. city had staged NRA parades before last week. But parades in Boston, Tulsa, Albany, Schenectady coincided with New York's.

On Boston Common, Mayor Curley administered an oath to school children: "I promise as a good American citizen to do my part for the NRA. I will buy where the Blue Eagle flies." At Ossining, N. Y., Sing Sing inmates got a holiday when 100 of their guards marched in the local demonstration. The Tulsa parade was led by Mrs. Samuel L. Johnson, General Johnson's 77-year-old mother, who had addressed a NRA rally night before. Said she: "People had better obey the NRA because my son will enforce it like lightning, and you can never tell when lightning will strike."

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