Rensselaer Democrat, Volume 1, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1898 — BUYING WAR BONDS. [ARTICLE]

BUYING WAR BONDS.

SMALL INVESTORS SUBSCRIBE TO THE POPULAR LOAN. Results of First Applications Indicate that Small Investors Will Take Entire Issue of •200,000,000-Regard-ed as First-class Securities. Loan Is a Success. The Government has taken every possible step to make the new bond issue in every sense a popular loan. While the great banking syndicates of this country and Europe are ready and willing to subscribe for the entire bond issue, the Treasury Department has decided that individual subscriptions will receive attention first and that the smallest amounts asked for will be allotted before the larger ones. This means that any private citizen who desires to invest a little money in the new government bonds will be accommodated before the millionaires and the banking institutions may purchase these desirable securities. Small investors regard the new bonds as first-class securities, and unless all present indications are misleading the entire issue will be placed before the larger banking institutions will be permitted to subscribe. «The people want the bonds and are not a whit backward about asking for them. The sub-treasury, the banks, postoftiee stations and express offices in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis. Cincinnati and other large cities, as well as many of the smaller ones, were besieged the first day with requests for information and for the application blanks prescribing the form in which subscriptions must be made. Conservative estimates place the first day’s “small subscription” totals at $3,000,000. In Chicago the day’s subscription reached $685,800. Experts say more than $lO,000.000 will be subscribed in small sums in New York alone. These bonds bear interest at 3 per cent, payable quarterly. The denominations of the coupon bonds are S2O, SIOO, SSOO and $1,000; of registered bonds, S2O, SIOO, SSOO, SI,OOO, $5,000 and SIO,OOO. In terms they are precisely like all other United States bends outstanding—that is, they are payable in coin. Secretary Gage’s letter of instructions reveals the precautions taken by the administration and the Treasury Department to make this a popular loan in the strictest sense —to insure the small investors getting the bonds if they want them. Until 3 o'clock p. m. July 14, no subscription will be honored that calls for more than SSOO. All others will be pigeonholed. If the subscriptions for SSOO or less exhaust the entire issue of $200,000,000 the others will stay pigeon-holed. Whatever of the total issue, if any remain, will be allotted after July 14, and again the small banks and the man of money. The allotment of what remains will commence with the smallest subscriber—that is, the man who wants S6OO or SI,OOO worth of bonds will have his application honored before that of the man who asks for $1,200 or $2,000, and so on. It is therefore practically impossible for the banks and wealthy men who would bid for blocks of SIOO,OOO or $1,000,000 io get any of these bonds if the people of modest means take advantage of this month of time; Marshaling of “dummies” by the banks, which some have appeared to fear, is out of the question, since two “dummies” would be needed for every sl,000 of bonds, and to get a block of SIOO,000 the bond seekers would need a whole regiment of “dummies.” The bonds are all to be sold to the people at a fixed price or at par value. This is another safeguard for the popular feature of the loan. No fear is entertained of a too rapid absorption of the nation’s currency by the bond purchasers. It is figured that most of the money to be put into bonds will be idle capital. When the small investors have had their fill, if there be anything left for the big bidders and banks, they will be permitted to receive their allotments in installments'of 20 per cent at intervals of forty days to guard against rapid absorption of the currency. If the national banks were able to get hold of large blocks, there might be an inflation of the currency by an issue of national bank notes against the new bonds, but this is not a real danger on account of the rthstricticns against the banks already noticed.