The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-06-09
CONVENTION CITY ALREADY PACKED BY (. 0. P. HOSTS Delegates, Alternates And Unattached Politicians
 Are Pouring In | LEADERS OF PARTY
 GETS INTO ACTION Arrangements Made At Hall To Accommodate
 13,0OO Persons

CLEVELAND, June 9.-Invading hosts of the grand old party gave Cleveland a foretaste today of the busy times to come when the republican na- tional conventions gets into swing.
 Delegates, alternates and unattached politicians poured in by every train for an advance word or two with this or that party chieftain. Hotel cor riders began to fill up with shifting groups, gossiping about every phase of the coming sessions. Official badges blossomed out, with a growing crop of unreasonable straw hats whose wearers defied overcast skies and occasional showers.
 One big delegation came tramping up Superior avenue with a brass band blaring away in the lead. The usual Sunday morning calm of the wide thor oughfare was shattered despite wet ting from the skies that caught the marchers just as they approached their hotel.
 As the trains from Washington rolled in to deliver their cargoes of congress sional folk, it began to look around the hotels as though Congress had just transferred itself to the Lakeside city, at least the republican from Capitol Hill There were reunions going on continuously in corners and door ways.
 Party Leaders Busy
 Party leaders were at work in con- ferences and the lobby gossip had to do with platform, internal rows among various delegations and other matters but the outstanding question under de- bate was the vice presidential nomi- nation. That was the chief topic be- fore every group.
 The scene was in marked contrast to that in Chicago four years ago. There were no banners flying before head quarters of rival candidates for nomina- tion. There was no picture on display except that of the ruddy headed New Englander who rules at the White House. Campaign songs and march ing clubs of political rooters were lack ing.
 At the huge convention hall, prac. ticalH everything was ready. Seats were were set to aeconiH6d date Fh0ft than 13,000 persons during the conven. tion sessions and it was open house in the galleries for any who wished to look on the scene. Thousands of Cleve- flanders took advantage of the oppor- 1nC SLCCp Ol oCdlS lHdl rise high under the vast arch of the roof were filled for hours. Below, on the amazing sweep of the main floor, stretched acres of empty seats in ordered rows, awaiting Tuesday.
 AmpIifiers Tested
 The rolling tones of the pipe organ hidden within the stage enclosure, that now holds the raised platform where invited guests, party diginitaries and convention officials will sit, filled the big hall with religious music through out the afternoon as the shifting thou sands in the galleries came and went. At times the mechanism that will catch up the convention speakers voices and send them through clustered amplifiers to the farthest seat and even to the wide spaces outside the hall, where thou sands who cannot gain admittance will stand, were tested.
 Tests were made too, of the radio broadcasting apparatus. To the right of the platform, tucked away in an in conspicuous corner, is a narrow booth of plate glass. Microphones on the table inside will carry out over the air a daily story of proceedings from the observer seated before them with the convention spreading before his eyes as he talks.
 Lighting Tried Out
 Hall officials tried out also, for the benefit of the thousands of visitors, the lighting equipment. Hidden cleo tries high around the walls would dim slowly to be replaced by blue shadows that crept downward to sink the vast auditorium into mysterious dusk. The rose on faces peeping down from the seats above toward the empty floor be- low faded into the gloom through which, from the dull blue glow of the sky lights, a twin beam of brilliant light, golden as sun light, shot down as from a break in lowering clouds to pick out the empty speakers stand in shining radiance.
 A turn of the switches and the blue dusk was shot with deepest red that grew and grew to rival the lurid flare of an autumn sunset or the reflection of a distant fire. Another turn, and it was as though day break was at hand and the good yellow sunlight beginning to stream down over the edge of the world. The silent thousands sat en- tranced through the magical display.
 There was little left to be done at the hall, just the connecting up of the last wires to tell the story of the convention over the country. Rarely be- fore has a national political conven- tion been housed in such a setting or sands to see and hear what goes on, and with organ and band and the light ing effects to add the impressive scene, there will be few who see the repub- lican national convention of 1924 in ession who will SOon forget the sight.