SOS Philharmonic

With rows of red figures marching across the balance sheet, with Clarence Hungerford Mackay so hard-fixed that he can no longer afford to turn them back with the quiet signing of a check, the directors of the proud New York Philharmonic-Symphony last week sent out an SOS for $500,000. Seventy of New York's richest music patrons first heard the help cry in the Park Avenue home of Harry Harkness Flagler. Already, Mr. Flagler informed them, there is a deficit of $150,000. The season's box-office receipts amount to $60,000 less than they did last year in January. Without a substantial guarantee to see it through the next three years the Orchestra will either have to lower the standard of its performances or disband.

With expenses reduced to a minimum it costs a good $600,000 yearly to run an orchestra like the Philharmonic. If the Philharmonic sold every ticket for every concert, it would take in approximately $400,000. Revenue from radio, program advertising and the present endowment would then make up the balance. But ticket sales this season will amount to something like $250,000.

Mr. Flagler and Marshall Field undertook last week to bear the campaign's expenses. Mr. Flagler, appointed head of a Steering Committee, addressed his first stump speech to the likely contributors who crowded his house: "We are the representatives of the people of this great city in an art which dignifies human life; which lifts one above the sorrows and anxieties of daily existence, and which is becoming recognized more and more as an integral part of the development of every normal individual."

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