New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-04-15

due in three years and bearing interest
at the rate of ID per cent-ne9ry $780,
100000 of these were sold. For all the
$4,000, 900 raised in this war we
paid well over 6 per cent, and at one
time in 1864 money was costing l5.5 per
cent
"a CLEAN of financial intelligence
struck the government when the Maine
was sunk at Havana in 1898. An issue
of S20O,00O,O00 3 per cent bonds, due in
twenty years, was offered in pieces as
small as $40. Il was widely advertised,
ard subscriptions ran up to over seven
times the required amount. In the year
after the sale these bonds sold at ll04
per cent-that is, a 500 bond sold in
the market for S110.75.'
Ny friend has a positive conviction
that the business Of financing nation
at war is up to every man and woman
who has a dollar that can possibly be
spared, just as every man of fighting
age is under obligation to defend the
country against armed foes. Without
this sort of support in more than one
crisis our history might have been diff
ferent. He said this very seriously.
Why not? 1t is obviously true!
War financing on a modern scale in
wolves not millions or hundreds of mill
ions, but billions of dollars. 1t involves
bills so big that the money to pay them
can't be raised in the regular way. We
may as we'll get that straight, and pre-
pare to educate our hundred million
citizens to enlist their dollars-to be-
come bond buyers.
On my last series of visits l was
chaperoned by my good friend j. ?.
Jones-he who turned my thoughts to
financial preparedness.
We began with the janitor of his
apartment house in West 145th Street
"a diligent citizen whose four children
are in school, and who, Jones says, earns
quite bit by doing odd jobs we'll and
promptly. | shook hands with Henry
Davis and asked:
Have you any money to spare?"
It's all right, Henry" J. P. cut in,
"He amt tryin' to borrow from you or
sell you anything"
Il got a little in the savings bank"
admitted Henry.
Would you lend it TO the government
if the government needed it,"
"Sure; why not? But they aim
askin' for it, are they?" V
"Not yet" | said. But maybe they
will; there's some talk about the gov
eminent putting out $5,000,000,000 of
So per cent bonds-and maybe $1,000
100000 more of certificates of indebted
ness"
rs that 500" said Henry, 81 amt
heard of it,"
Going to try to buy some?' asked.
"No-don't know how you'd go about
it. Who's goin to handle them?"
"Oh, | suppose you could get them
from Morgan, or somebody in Wall
Street"
Good night! Think of me goin'
down to Morgans with my little $50" I
had lightened Henry Davis's whole day
with the suggestion.
We went the rounds of a grocer, a
drug store clerk, an expressman, an
Amsterdam Avenue trolley car motor
man, an office manager in a brewery,
the woman proprietor of a small fur
nshing store, stained and aproned
man in a market-probabIy fifteen citi-
zens of New York who help along the
city's business. We put it up to all of
them-cOuld they, and would they, do
their little bits toward meeting the cost
of participating in the war?
Sure" Such was composite an
swer. "But what yu givin' us? If the
gov'ment wants money, yu know dern
well they won't come to u.s.
Are they right? Shall we throw prec-
edent to the winds and go straight to
the people for our first money? Prob