Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1919 — KEEP THE LOAN FIRES BURNING, WORKERS! [ARTICLE]

KEEP THE LOAN FIRES BURNING, WORKERS!

* Finish the Job” Should Be the Slogan of Victory Liberty Loan Leaders of Seventh District SOLDIERS STICK TO POSTS ‘Chairmen and Their Alda Must Not Quit Until All the Government's War Obligations Have Been Discharged. i Returns at the five state headquarters In Chicago show that the county lehairmen and other important workers In the Seventh Federal Reserve district are signing up for the fifth tbig loan. They are actuated by the (same sense of duty, it is reported, as fills the breasts of the soldiers now held in France. The soldiers over there long for home; but they realize that their work is not done. Garrisons 'must be held along the Rhine until peace has been formally signed and the terms of the peace treaty have •been carried out

In the same way it is generally recognized by chairmen and other workers throughout the Seventh Federal Reserve district, the men who are responsible for the financial part of the war, cannot quit until the financial obligations are discharged. The big bills for any undertaking come in immediately after the completion of that work. It would be an irresponsible business man, it Is conceded on all hands, who would refuse responsibility for that part of his contractor’s bills that came in after the driving of the last nail. The Fourth Liberty Loan paid off the then outstanding treasury certificates of indebtedness and furnished enough new money to carry the government until mid-December. Since that date the treasury department has been borrowing from the banks at the rate of $300,000,000 a week, and by the time the Victory Loan is offered will owe nearly six billion dollars. The Fifth loan money will pay off these bank loans and carry the government until the money raised under the 1918 revenue act begins to come in. The sudden termination of the war brought an increase in the day to day military expenditures. The total for December passed, for the first time, the two billion mark. The January total was slightly less, but exceeded any other month except January. February promises to show a considerable decrease. The high daily outlays since the end of fighting have been due to the liquidation of the war machine, and were unavoidable. There is still a great mass of contract obligations to be cleared away—contracts entered into by business men for the rush production of munitions that would have been absolutely essential had the war gone on for a few weeks or months longer.

Chairmen and workers who happen to hear of anyone who Is declining to participate In the next loan have ready to their hands a set of the best possible arguments ngainst this sort of conduct. In the first place tlft man who refuses to work in the next loan or to buy bonds of the next Issue can be charged with being a quitter or a coward. Neither Is an especially American attribute. As a nation Americans have the reputation of seeing a thing through. And the fields of France proclaim that they are not cowards. But the infrequent loan worker who is saying that he cannot find time to participate in the Victory drive, or does not- feel any obligation to do so may be charged with cowardice. It is generally recognized where such an attitude is encountered that the man fears the fifth loan will not be a success. The man who Is preparing to quit now, it is pointed out, is doing so •because he ddes not want to be Identified witlj a failure. The answer to this is that none of the 6,000 marines who stopped the victorious German march on Paris at Chateau Thierry asked to be excused from going into the fight because he expected it to be a failure. Yet all the foreign military 'men thought that the Americans could not stop the Germans at this point. Another argument answers a good deal of half-hearted comment which maintains that it makes no difference whether the banks have to take the loan. But the business man or the wage earner who thinks that It makes no difference to him is decidedly mistaken. If the public does not take the bonds the banks, as everyone knows, do so. Now on December 81 the national banks of the country had resources of $20,042,224,000. This was the first time in the nation’s history *hat the total ever got above t&a jtwenty-bllllon mark, t This enormous banking power shows, ,tor one thing, that the nation can take another six billion loan with ease if the organization gets out and iworks. But it also shows something else. The twenty billion, of course, is greatly more than the total that Is actually available for credit operations. If the banks should have to take the greater part' of the next loan, and to add this burden to the more than two billion now tied up in Liberty loans, nnd the additional treasury certificates

will be Issued next summer and fall, there will be a very much reduced balance for general business credit accommodation. v Everyone knows what credit limitations did to business in the days when fighting was going on. The readjustment pause that has followed has lessened the demand, but the minute business starts forward on the reconstruction boom, as It will in a short time, every dollar of credit facilities possible will be in demand, and any such limitation as a failure of the loan would entail would mean business stagnation and unemployment. Every loan worker in the Seventh Federal Reserve district must realize that the success of his own business, or the size of his own pay envelope, is tied up with the success of the government’s financial plan.

Finally, the nation has such an enormous amount of new wealth that it is impossible to assume that the loan will fail. Everything says that, unless patriotism and common sense were both stricken dead In every American breast upon thd signing of the armistice, the loan will be a success. National bank deposits in 1913 amounted to only $6,051,689,087; today they amount to $15,051,000,000. Farm profits on the 1918 crop have been enormous and the 1919 crop promises to be the greatest in history. The hard-coal mines of the country produced 76,649,918 gross tons of new wealth in 1918 and the petroleum wells added 345,500,000 barrels of oil. The national balance of trade —the excess of. exports over imparts —has grown from $252,677,921 in 1909 to $3,150,000,000 in 1918. In four short years we have changed from a debtor nation owing $4,000,000,000 abroad, to a creditor nation that is owed $10,000,000,000 by foreign nations and their people. And lastly, American banks hold the greatest accumulation of gold ever known in history—as much as is owned by the next eight most wealthy nations put together. Any citizen who fears that the fifth loan cannot and will not be subscribed has little of the courage and confidence that made America famous at Chateau Thierry and Cantigny and in the Argonne Forest.