The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-03-25

way in which it has brought out the
 hidden wealth of Britain. Men and
 women whom their neighbors had
 never suspected of owning more than
 enough to bury them decently dug up
 thousands of dollars from their stock
 ings and lent it to the government
 The officials of one bank in a Lon
 don suburb were astonished one day
 toward the close of the loan to see
 poor looking old woman enter and
 dump on the counter canvas bag con
 taining s10000 in sovereigns ts5 gold
 pieces). which she declared she wanr-
 cd to lend to the government for the
 war. They questioned her and discov-
 cred that she had kept the gold in
 her house, adding to it steadily since
 a bank failure 10 years ago in which
 some of her neighbors lost money.
 Similar incidents occurred in other
 parts of the country and the treas
 ury has received quite a substantial sum in actual gold coin, which has
 not been N circulation in England
 since the early days of the war. The
 loan also revealed the existence Of
 scores of unsuspected millionaires
 England was astonished to wake up
 one morning and read in the newspa>
 pers that Miss Emily Charlotte Talbot
 Of Port Talbot Glamorganshire, had
 subscribed $20,000,000 to the war loan
 It is true that Miss Talbot declared
 the next day that the sum was not
 s2O. 100000 but $4oo,o00. but the pulp lication of the story revealed the fact that Miss Talbot. who was utterly un- known outside her own little town in Wales. could have put the sum orig finally named into the loan and a good deal more. too, if she could have real ized her assets. A search into her his tory disclosed that she is the aged daughter of man who sat in Parlia- ment for 60 years and who developed the town of Port Talbot from a fish ing village into a great coal port and an agricultural estate of compara. lively little value into an important mineral property. There were lots of other similar surprises. Men and wom- en who had never been suspected of great wealth came forward with sums running into hundreds of thousanes and even millions of dollars.
 But the great feature of the loan was its appeal to the small man. When the figures come to be published 1t will be found that hundreds of thou sands of individual investments of $5 and $10 were made. Loan associations were formed in factories and work shops to which each worker contrib uted his or her share and the total was invested in war loan. Employers agreed to advance money for war loan against salaries to be repaid by week ly installm ents. Even banks agreed to advance money to approved customers to be repaid by installments, taking as security the war loan stock itself. The loan also revealed unsuspected war profits. Business firms which d few years ago needed every penny of their capital in their own business were able to come along with large sums from their reserve funds. Shippin g firms particularly shone in this fea- 1 ture of the loan and the money was literally poured into the lap of the i chancellor of the exchequer. Cities and other municipalities also turned their | reserves for improvement schemes held up by the war into the common fund ! for beating the enemy
 ] There is no doubt that large sums i have been obtained from wotkingmen s savings I met famous English la 1. l Dor leader yesterday looking both 1 amused and disgusted and on asking him what was the matter got this re- ply:
 T have just been down to call on a big firm of iron founders to plead with them for an advance of wages for their employees on account of the great hardships caused by high war