Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1898 — THE WAR FUND LOAN. [ARTICLE]

THE WAR FUND LOAN.

Democrats Are Shown How to Raise Money Without Resorting to Syndicates. The democratic press of the country shows plain signs of being disgruntled over the popular feature of the new war loan. This is’not strange. It is, in fact, a party matter. During the last democratic administration a large block of government bonds was issued and the entire amount was allowed to go to a multimillionaire syndicate manipulated by President Cleveland’s former law partner in New York, Mr. Stetson. The people were not allowed any chance at those bonds, first hand, and the syndicate made a profit of several millions. That record is made prominent by the contrast it presents to the present case. If President McKinley had followed in the footsteps of President Cleveland a perfect cyclone of indignation would have swept over the country. The democratic press would have found the English language all too feeble to express their wrath, and the republican press would have recognized the justice of the indignation. Yet there was no more excuse for syndicating the'Cleveland than the McKinley bonds. There was a popular demand for both. The republican press took the same position then in favor of giving the people a chance that it did in this latter instance. The .same arguments, substantially, were used in both cases. The democratic press was indifferent, and bj’ acquiescence shared with Cleveland responsibility for that syndicate. The popular fe&ture was even a greater success than reported when the time for subscription closed. That date of closure was the 14th inst., and a Washington dispatch of the 18th states that since the 14th nearly 20,000 subscriptions have been received. Some of them were delayed in the transmission and will be accepted; others were too late. Subscriptions to the amount of SSOO or less will absorb fully SIOO,000,000 of the bonds, or one-half of the whole. The other half will nearly, if not quite, be absorbed by subscriptions under $5,000 in amount. The entire loan is thus distributed to individual subscribers in small lots. As a matter of course some of these subscribers acted as agents, no doubt, for others who furnished the money, but such cases form at most only an insignificant percentage of the grand aggregate. "• Some of these bonds were subscribed as a permanent lean or investment and some with a view to making a profit on them. The government sold the bonds at par. They will probably command a premium. This profit will be small at best in any given and will be widely distributed. It will be made, if at all, not out of the government, but out of the second-hand purchasers — namely, the banks and other moneyed corporations which want large blocks of bonds and canget them only by going into the open market. The Cleve-land-Stetson syndicate made its millions of profits by second-hand sales. The aggregate profit of the new bondholders may be even greater than that harvested by the syndicate, but it will be distributed among the people. Everybody had an equal chance, so far as the government was concerned, to subscribe, and thus share in the profits. It is safe to say that no future administration will dare go back to the syndicate policy in placing bonds. The republican party can add one more trophy to its long list of greht achievements. A republican congress and a republican administration between them succeeded in doing what no other nation on earth has ever done. All other governments, great and small, have placed their loans through great banking houses. Great Britain has the Bank of England. France the Bank of France. Spain the Bank of Spain, and so on all along the line. Behind and above all these, including even the Bank of England, is the great house of Rothschild, which made millions out of the Cleveland administration. For many years now these great moneyed cornorations have exacted toll from their governments and from minor states, quite as a matter of course. At last the United States has shown the nations a more excellent, way to financier their loans. They have given the civilized world what ought to be. in government finances, an epochmaking object lesson in the highest branch of political economy.—Chicago Inter Ocean.