Return To Secret Party Funds: Value of Reed Committee

RETURN TO SECRET PARTY FUNDS: VALUE OF REED COMMITTEE, Perry Belmont, hardcover, 1927. BOOK CONDITION: very good. The text block is in fine condition with no tears, dog-ears, or marks. Pages are age-toned. There is no bookplate but the signature of a prior owner is written inside the front cover. Not a remainder or library book. The dark blue boards are in very good condition (lightly bumped spine at top). 7 ½ x 5 1/4 , 211 pages, 14 ounces XX This is a reprint of the 1912 US Senate document 495, The Abolition of the Secrecy of Party Funds, The Origin of the Movement, its Purpose and Effect, with an additional and extensive preface. [From the preface to this edition]. Are we drifting back to secret party funds? In view of an approaching Presidential election [Republican Herbert Hoover vs. Democrat Al Smith] it has obviously become of the utmost importance that the country should realize that a situation exists in regard to which it is not too much to say that it is tending to a resumption of the former methods of secret political contributions and expenditures. The almost incalculable wealth of our country has brought into our elections vast expenditures, legitimate and illegitimate. A return to the formerly existing secrecy as to their source and their purpose would inevitably be dangerous and harmful as never before in our political history. Public opinion is as much as ever alive to the importance of retaining the advantages of the publicity laws, but the confusion created by the merging of the Publicity and the Corrupt Practices Laws ultimately produce general indifference to the whole subject. The existing Federal Corrupt Practices Law of 1925 does not, in compliance with the decision of the Supreme Court, in the Newberry Case hereafter referred to, apply to primary elections.…