Word: townsends
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Stretched shoeless on his bed in a Chicago hotel one day last week, Dr. Francis E. ("The Plan") Townsend received the Press, thoughtfully rejected a suggestion that he might be the next President of the U. S. "I wouldn't be a candidate," mused the 69-year-old onetime country doctor, "except on one condition-That I could unite the people and resign the day after election. As long as I'm able to wiggle, I'd like to be able to do a little dictating to the President, and I think I could do that better...
Votes & Dimes-Same day Dr. Townsend flew to Cleveland, and his followers by thousands began trooping in for the second Townsend National Convention. By bus, battered automobile and day coach they arrived from every corner of the land, biggest delegations coming from the Pacific Coast and nearby Ohio towns. Straight to headquarters at the Hotel Cleveland they went to plank down $2 each for credentials and badges, check their luggage, then set off to look for cheap rooms in boarding houses and tourist camps...
...Townsend men held up their light wash pants with wide suspenders, wore no coats over their rumpled shirts; the women wore plain print dresses, outmoded hats, sensible shoes. At week's end Cleveland merchants complained that they had bought record quantities of picture postcards, almost nothing else. But there were nearly 5,000 delegates-more than the Republican and Democratic convention delegates combined-and as many more visitors. If they were genuinely representative, they meant that there were millions of oldsters like them throughout the land, each with a vote, each with 10? per month for Townsend Club dues...
...vast Public Hall sat the delegates when their beloved leader uprose on opening day to sound his keynote. To outsiders he might seem a dim. ineffectual visionary, but to them he was a genuine Messiah. With an artificial tan poppy in the lapel of his white coat. Dr. Townsend settled his long chin down on his high, stiff collar, glued his eyes on his manuscript, droned out a fierce denunciation of New Deal extravagance. Only when it came to a remedy did the author of the plan to have the Government give away...
...stopping to explain where the spending money was to come from, Dr. Townsend sat down amid rapturous cheers, whistles, yells, and ringing of cow bells by his convinced disciples...