their charges. I referred to these organizations that were attacking me as "radical organizations." I told the people that those organizations had gone over my record with a fine-toothed comb and found only 14 votes to complain about out of all I had cast in Congress, and that I had just checked up and I found-I had a certificate from the Clerk of the House-that I had cast some 82,000 votes since I had been a Member of Congress. So, I said, "If these folks who are opposing me can only find 14 of my votes out of 82,000 to complain about, I guess I have been a pretty good Congressman and a better legislator than I thought I was," and they agreed with me.

Mr. McCULLOCH. The people accepted that argument?

Mr. BROWN. Well, they agreed with me by about 75 percent of the total vote, or a little better.

Mr. MCCULLOCH. Can we go back to that question-have you come to a conclusion as to whether or not a committee advocating the election or defeat of a candidate▬▬

Mr. BROWN (interposing). Yes, you may go back to that question, but I thought I answered it. If you can make the law cover all these various organizations so that they have to report.

Mr. McCULLOCH. As a publisher of a newspaper, Mr. Brown, of course it becomes difficult, if not utterly impossible to cover the reports on all these organizations.

Mr. BROWN. Yes, and we are involving the freedom of the press clause of the Constitution.

Mr. MCCULLOCH. It is most difficult, under the law, to regulate the kind of thing that they pictured for you on your voting record, isn't it? Mr. BROWN. Well, again the freedom of the press is involved, but you understand if I take one of my newspapers and in one of its issues criticize you as a candidate for Congress, there is no question about my constitutional right to say what I want to about you. But suppose I would take that issue where you were running for the Senate and printed perhaps, several million extra copies as has been done, and is being done in every campaign by many organizations in this country, and distributed these through political organizations and other ways, by mail and by carrier, to every voter in Ohio, then it becomes a question of whether or not I am engaged in political activity. The freedom of the press may no longer be involved, because certainly freedom of the press does not go so far as to say you can do that, although you have a right to say many things against a man in public office. It all goes back to Tom Payne's papers, by raising the question of where freedom of the press stops and starts. As I said in the beginning, your committee has a most difficult problem. Men in public office and in public life have been trying to do something about this political spending situation for a good many years and have not come up with a perfect answer yet. I doubt very much if this committee, as close as it is to this subject, can do it.

Mr. McCULLOCH. Have you come to any conclusion on the question of whether or not every candidate for President during the preconvention period, and every committee interested in the nomination of a candidate for President, should be required, under Federal law, to make a full accounting of contributions and expenditures for that purpose?

Mr. BROWN. Well, again you have the problem of who is a candidate and who isn't. Now, for instance, in the last Democratic convention

Mr. Stevenson wasn't a candidate; that is, he said he wasn't. I remember when Tom Dewey wasn't a candidate in 1944. I was managing the Bricker campaign and I found out there was a lot of support for Mr. Dewey, because he came in first and Bricker came in second, and yet he consistently said right up to the last that he wasn't seeking the nomination. Of course, he took a vacation and made a trip through the West before the convention, but it was nonpolitical. Where do you draw the line? Many of these Presidential trips-you remember the one in 1940, wasn't it, when Mr. Roosevelt made a nonpolitical tour of the country shortly before the election to see that everything was going all right, and that prosperity was here, or getting ready to be here, or something, but that wasn't a political trip. Who was going to challenge his statement? Who was going to challenge Mr. Stevenson, or Tom Dewey?

Mr. McCULLOCH. What would be your opinion after it had been definitely determined that the man was a candidate for the nomination and he had committees organized for the purpose, although volunteer committees?

Mr. BROWN. Well, unless you create some particular agency, and I have usually been opposed to creating new offices, or put the responsibility upon the Attorney General or someone else, to enforce the laws, it wouldn't mean much to have it. I don't know whether you would get a complete report or not.

What is a political activity before, or in a convention? Sometimes you get a question there. You Members can attend a convention as an official guest, yet most of you have some candidate that you favor, and I am not sure whether you would say that you spent any money politically while at the convention, or prorate it. I have even known Members of Congress to support two or three different candidates for President at the same time. But you have this fringe question that comes up. In my opinion, if you had some sort of control over preconvention activities-some sort of requirement for reporting-then it might be beneficial. Just what it is to be, I do not know. I certainly do not want to step in here and take away from this committee its prerogatives in making decisions.

Mr. McCULLOCH. We are glad to have your views, because you are so well qualified to give them, but there seems to me to be another fringe question, that is extremely difficult to answer and that is, How will you limit the expenditures of the Federal Government in their propaganda campaign over a period of years?

Mr. BROWN. Again, that is a grave question.

Mr. McCULLOCH. Many times that material is directed toward electing candidates to office, although they do not say so in their literature. Mr. BROWN. Yes, sir.

Mr. KARSTEN. That will be your problem for the next 4 years.

Mr. McCULLOCH. How are you going to limit campaign expenditures then? You have got to do something to meet that problem of propaganda by government agencies for this, that or the other candidate?

Mr. BROWN. When is a public official making a political appearance and when isn't he? When is a Congressman, for instance, speaking before the local Grange or something of that sort, appearing as a public official, or because he thinks it might help him a little bit in the coming election? You have those problems. You have problems on

contributions. What is the difference between spending $5,000 to buy a delegate's vote in a convention and saying you will appoint him Ambassador if he will support your Presidential candidate?

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think that happens?

Mr. BROWN. I imagine it has happened some time in the dim and dusty past. I do not know of any particular instances myself, but I do remember at one time when a member of the credentials committee at one of the conventions stated frankly he had changed his position reluctantly, but he decided he would like to be a Federal judge and it had been promised to him. So, what are you going to do about that? How can you prove it? And, would you put down on your report that you made those promises? Would you put down on your report that you expended so much money and promised 26 different men the Vice Presidency, and to whom? You can't do those things.

Mr. KEATING. You have certainly been very helpful in broadening the scope of our task here.

Mr. BROWN. Some of the things which I have pointed out, I hope, have been helpful. The task that your committee is confronted with is not an easy one. There are all kinds of practical reasons why it is difficult, if not impossible, to write a law that will control every given situation and to make all matters political above the ambitious acts of some individuals, which, perhaps, might be just beyond the pale a little bit.

Mr. KARSTEN. Private groups, as I understand it, are now permitted to make contributions.

Mr. BROWN. That is both the Federal law and the law in most States.

Mr. KARSTEN. There has grown up a thing which is a medium of advertising whereby they run an avertisement, and strictly it is a political advertisement, although it doesn't say so, and I just wonder if you have any views on that?

Mr. BROWN. Well, your institutional advertising is a difficult thing, of course, to get at, and I don't know how much of it affects a campaign or the results, or whether institutional advertising to get out the vote could be termed political. Everyone should vote. In my district, or in my home county, for every 10 votes you get out at least 7 will be Republican. Of course, I have always been more interested in getting out the vote in the Republican counties than in getting out the vote in the Democratic counties when I was a candidate and have been helped by such institutional advertising. Both political parties always have a program for their convention where a great many groups take advertising, institutional, and so forth and so on. A few people read this program and some of them keep it as souvenirs. They will raise anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000 or $200,000 from advertising to help pay the cost of the convention Usually, such programs are put out without the knowledge of anybody in party authority, but they always pay out most of the money received for purposes that help the party. And then you go on down to the dinners at $100 a plate and you will see corporations taking tickets for whole tables.

Mr. KARSTEN. This is strictly a party matter as distinguished from a private group or corporation as far as one of these Jackson Day dinners.

Mr. BROWN. If a private group or corporation buys 100 dinner tickets, or 10 dinner tickets, at $100 each, and the money goes to a political committee, what is the difference? Isn't that a political contribution?

Mr. KARSTEN. You have subscriptions to the dinner.

Mr. BROWN. It has been ruled it isn't a contribution by someone, but in reality it is. There are many ways, as I said in the beginning. We kid the public when we say we are going to limit this and that, when actually we don't.

Mr. KARSTEN. On that point, Mr. Brown, this figure of $3,000,000 for the national campaign, would you recommend repealing that or increasing it?

Mr. BROWN. Well, I think just as much money has been spent since you had that limitation on national campaigns as was spent at any time in any national campaign before we had it.

Mr. KARSTEN. In other words, it means nothing and it would be just as well to repeal it?

Mr. BROWN. In my opinion, it means little or nothing. It only means you have to have various committees to do the expending of the funds. As I said, these telecasts were made under the auspicies of various committees and you would hear them announced, and that was entirely legal to do it that way. Do not misunderstand me, but actually it is still a political expenditure, and if the Congress had the thought and intention and the purpose to say there shall not be more than $3,000,000 spent for a Presidential campaign, the present law hasn't worked, and I don't know how you can make it work under our constitutional system. For instance, I certainly have the right, you and I, to form a committee to participate in political affairs, and to support a candidate; that is our constitutional right as citizens. How are you going to abridge it?

Mr. KARSTEN. You do not feel the limitation has been beneficial or has accomplished anything?

Mr. BROWN. I do not think it has accomplished a thing. I think instead it has confused some people, but not very many. Most Americans appreciate the fact that this limitation does not mean anything. Mr. KARSTEN. Do you think it would be better to repeal it? Mr. BROWN. I think it would be more honest to repeal it and require, if you can, a more complete report of expenditures.

As I said in the beginning, perhaps, the only way you can control these expenditures is to require the candidate or the party to designate some committee or individual from whom there much be a clearance for all expenditures; and yet there you run up against that old constitutional right of the individual citizen to spend his own money, and to say what he pleases about those who are seeking his franchise. Mr. KARSTEN. If we do take off the limitation and provide for a full disclosure, do you think that might help conditions?

Mr. BROWN. I think a full disclosure always results in a little more care being taken as to how expenditures are made. Sometimes a little more care will be taken as to how reports are made, but I still do not think that is a complete answer. In fact, I doubt that there is any real answer, one that can be found that will solve all these problems.

Mr. McCULLOCH. Do you know anything about the British law regulating campaigns, campaign expenditures and the like?

Mr. BROWN. Well, I am not an authority on that. I know that in the Parliament races there is a very strict limitation in Great Britain, but you have a different system there. You don't have StatesMr. KEATING (interposing). Your parties run the whole thing as I understand.

Mr. BROWN. That is right. You do not have the division of power between the national government and the local government in Great Britain that you have in this country. Remember that under our Constitution the States still have primary authority as to the qualifications of electors and the right to vote. For instance, I think in every State in the Union except Georgia you have to be 21 years of age to vote, but in Georgia you can vote at 18. So, the 19-year-old boy there has a participation in the election of the President of the United States, where a 19-year-old boy in Ohio, New York, or Louisiana, and these States does not have that right; and yet that Georgia vote counts and might influence and control the entire election.

Mr. McCULLOUCH. Do you have any ideas or opinions on whether or not the length of the campaign should be fixed by law?

Mr. BROWN. Well, I don't know whether you can fix it by law or not, or whether that should be a matter for the parties to judge, but I do think that when the campaign is too long a lot of people grow a little tired of political speaking and broadcasts, and so forth and so on, before the election is over, and I doubt if many votes are changed in the last 2 or 3 weeks, unless something sensational develops.

Mr. McCULLOUCH. The length of the campaign could have a very definite bearing upon the total expenditures.

Mr. BROWN. Oh, yes; it would do that. We limit our activities in State and local campaigns to a certain extent by having official campaign openings, or party conventions, and by agreement we just start campaigning at a certain time, and we run a couple of months. But, as I pointed out in my testimony, in my own campaign in 1950 it ran from March until November on my opponent's side, at least, which was a long period of time and I think resulted in rather heavy expenditures, but I do not know whether that could be prevented by law or not. I don't know how we are going to say that if Congressman McCullouch is a candidate for relection he cannot do any campaigning up to a certain date. And you get into that great field of what is campaigning? I know some fellows who go to church just when the campaign is on, and they start pretty early if they decide they are going to be a candidate. Is that campaigning, or isn't it? They shake hands with all the brothers and sisters. You have seen it.

The CHAIRMAN. Any further questions?

Mr. Long, do you have any questions?

Mr. LONG. The idea has been presented, Mr. Brown, by political scientists that perhaps the Government is an answer to this problem and should undertake, at least to a limited extent, subsidizing campaigns for candidates for different Federal offices. I wonder what your views are on that?

Mr. BROWN. I might say to the counsel that I have been in public office for 35 years and interested in politics longer than that, yet, I have never determined in my own mind just what a political scientist is or what he knows about practical politics. In my opinion, we have enough crackpots running for office now; and, if you make any arrangement whereby the Government and the taxpayer directly finances