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The U. S. Press spent $600,000, employed 726 journalists to write 5.000,000 words about the Republican National Convention at Chicago last week (see p. 10). For the first time at a National Convention, photographers with their safe new flashlamps were permitted to ply their trade up & down the aisles. The Associated Press cannily hired ambulances to rush its pictures from the Stadium. For all this enterprise and expenditure, there was an obvious dearth of hot news, but many a famed correspondent had a good time writing about and talking to famed colleagues, also had fun being looked at. For nowadays when the Fourth Estate goes to cover a show it takes its own show along.

Easiest pair of journalists to pick out in the great press box were patch-eyed Floyd Gibbons and grinning Will Rogers, wishing they were "back in China where something really happens." It was evident from his second Convention colyum that Reporter Gibbons, who also spoke over NBC, found nothing important happening. Wrote he: "Hello everybody! Chicago looks like it might be going to a picnic. And Chicago ought to be picnic enough for anybody. Why, you can take a taxi and in a few minutes you're out of the heat and crowds of the Loop. Out passing green trees, beautiful parks, smooth drives-- right out to the Edgewater Beach Hotel."

In the crowd of notables that swarmed to shake the Rogers hand appeared Henry Lewis Mencken, eating a big black cigar. "Who's going to be Vice President, Will?" asked he. Reporter Rogers favored Charles Curtis. "The Republicans should not show so much race prejudice," ob served Mr. Mencken. "They had an In dian last time. They ought to get a nig ger this year."

Back cracked Reporter Rogers in his syndicated colyum: "H. L. Mencken was backing the Presidential candidacy of Senator France. If he had been elected the American Mercury would have re placed the Congressional Record."

Another Rogerism: "He [Chairman Snell] said that while our Savior had rescued the world in Biblical times from the Democrats, masquerading as the Medes and Persians, that Herbert Hoover was the modern Savior. In fact he kinder gave the engineer the edge over the carpenter."

Next to Editrix Eleanor Patterson of the Washington Herald sat Colyumist Arthur Brisbane pecking away, eyes down cast, mouth drooping, at a noiseless type writer. Dedicated with the rest of the Hearst organization to the Presidential candidacy of Democrat John Nance Garner, he had little of interest to say about the Convention, but he, too, considered Reporter Rogers good copy. "It's a mistake about Will Rogers being so rich," wrote he. "John D. Rockefeller Jr., recently in Chicago, is much richer than Mr. Rogers, who if you asked him 'Where is your next million coming from,' would have to answer, 'From [cinemagnate] Louis Mayer, I suppose, but I really don't know. These are terrible times.' "

The Liberal Press was shunted well off to one corner. There Robert Morse Lovett of the New Republic pursed his lips in amused disapproval, nursed a fat brief case between his knees. With him was Author John Dos Passes, stern commentator on the American Scene, ingenuously delighted with his first National Convention which he, too, was to report for the New Republic at 2-c- a word. Publisher Henry Goddard Leach of the Forum looked on austerely from a private box. Scripps-Howard Colyumist Heywood Broun settled his flaccid paunch behind a narrow desk, wrote many a witty crack.

Even sober WTalter Lippmann of the New York Herald Tribune, whose Publisher Ogden Reid & wife were to be seen in the Press stand, was tickled by Keynoter Dickinson: "The historians admit," wrote he, "that even Abraham Lincoln made a few mistakes, but if the Senator's story is to be believed Herbert Hoover has been invincibly right from start to> finish. Such infallibility has not been known on earth, and when Mr. Hoover has his speech called to his attention by one of his secretaries he will feel either that the speech is nonsense or that the office of President of the United States is a paltry thing for one who has such cosmic genius."

When a speaker made an unbearably fatuous remark, Publisher William Allen White of the Emporia (Kan.) Gazette muttered "spinach." Little Publisher Roy Howard and his bearded partner Robert Scripps muttered nothing but laughed a great deal. Publisher Robert Rutherford McCormick rarely got to the Convention, busied himself writing scary front-page editorials for his Chicago Tribune. One, titled "Half Bolshevik; Half Free," concluded with: "Unless we have, in Lincoln's phrase, a new birth of freedom, the death of our civilization is near at hand."

In much lighter vein wrote "Congressman" Westbrook Pegler, whose sport colyum is syndicated through the Tribune: "I do not favor the return of the old saloon. Too many of our citizens owed bills in the old saloons, and if the saloons came back they would be subject to annoyance."

"The situation hasn't changed a bit," chirped Arthur ("Bugs"') Baer, another highly paid journalistic wisecracker. "The Wets are lined up against the Drys. And the Drys are lined up against the bar."

"I thought the Wet parade was sized up very well by a young lady in a green dress who stood in front of the Blackstone for half an hour," said Sportswriter Damon Runyan. "She said, finally: 'Well, it isn't so exciting, but it saves us hearing a lot of complaint from Paw tonight about his sore feet.'

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