Cash & Cadle

Most submarginal U. S. churches--and there are many--would welcome the ministrations of a business-minded churchman who would: 1) supply each of them with a $45 radio (which he could buy in quantities for $25 apiece) ; 2) broadcast to them a rousing Sunday morning sermon, a good choir program; 3) ask in return only such donations as they care to send him. From Indianapolis for the past five years, a smart businessman named E. (for Emmett) Howard Cadle has been doing exactly that. Last week, celebrating the fifth anniversary of his broadcasts over Cincinnati's big station WLW, he counted as his own 330 radio-equipped churches, each with an average 220 Sunday listeners, in the rural districts of Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio and West Virginia.

E. Howard Cadle claims that in 1914 he was saved from a gambler's and drunkard's grave by his mother's prayers. Successful thereafter as an automobile salesman (they called him "Car-a-Day" Cadle), owner of a chain of shoe-repairing shops and fruit juice stands in Indianapolis, he got more pious all the time. In 1921 he built Cadle Tabernacle, a large Spanish-style building, in which he took to preaching.

Big, aggressive Mr. Cadle made a good thing of the oldtime religion, today drives a Cadillac, owns an airplane. In his People's Church, Inc. his son, Buford, 29, is business manager, his daughter, Helen Cadle Major, 26, office manager, his daughter, Virginia Ann, 16, director of young people's activities. Operating expenses of the Tabernacle and radio programs, which bring in 4,000 letters a week, come to $100,000 a year. The Church's motto is: "No creed but Christ, no law but love, no Book but the Bible." No donations are refused. The Cadle 1,485-voice choir is something to hear.

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