Evening star., 1941-06-14

- through the post
Office and en-
MeLemore. courage citizens
to buy enough of these e month so
that by March IS of each year they
will have accumulated the amount
of their total tax.
This is pig-bank banking on
huge scale and undoubtedly has
great merit. Its only weakness is
that no one can guarantee that the
citizens will be foresighted enough
to go to the post Office each month
and buy these stamps. 1t seems to
me that all Secretary Morgenthau's
plan needs to make it rouSing
success is to dress it up so that
thrift won't be its only appeal, and
would like to make a few sugges-
tions along that line.
To begin with, the post Office is
an unhappy choice of place to sell
stamps. Post Office is fun to play
but not to go to. Can you name one
good time you ever had in post
office? You can search the auto
biographies of the world without
| finding one nostalgia yearning to
relive an afternoon in the shade
of the general delivery window or
description of happy hours spent
in the line in front of the parcel
post wicket.
Let the stamps be sold at places
where people like to go. At ZOOS,
at baseball and. football games, at
juke joints, at free lunch counters
and at movies on bank night.
Now for the stamps themselves.
Why stamps? Not one man in a
thousand is a philatelist. Too, a
man might get his tax stamps mixed
up with his regular stamps and
send off his November income saw
ingS on letter to Aunt May thank
ing her for the homemade chill
sauce.
Why not sell a man something
more allurlng than stamps? lnas-
much as he is going to have to turn
them back to the Government at
the end OF the year, without q bit
of gain for himself, why not substi-
tute something of utilitarian or dec
orative value that he can use around
the house?
Why not antimacassars, with the
names Of the months for which he
has saved woven into them2 Think
of the quiet pride with which a man
could ask you to have a seat in an
armchair which had April and May
on the two arms and June for the
head rest. This would be practical,
because the Government could have
them laundered each year and use
them over again.
<x **
For those who didn't want an
timacassars there would be a choice.
Golf sticks, for instance. In April
you'd get driver, in May brassie,
and so on. Let man take three
shots to get out of a bunker be-
cause he had forgotten to save in
August and didn't have a sand
wedge and he'd hasten to correct
his oversight.
The one possible danger in this
otherwise f1awless plan of substi-
tuting useful items for stamps is
that the buyers might get so at
tached to them that it would hurt
to give them back to the Govern
ment on March Is. If this proved
to be the case, the remedy is OBJ
vious. Mr.. Morgenthau could
switch to objects to which persons
are not likely to become attached.
| He could have his sellers load up
buyers with such unattractive bric-
a-brac that citizens would come to
look upon March IS not as a day
of trial and tribulation but one Of
Thanksgiving and release-a day
upon which they could unburden
themselves of such things as iron
deer, stereopticon sets, desk lamps
made of alligators, armadillo sew
ing baskets, postal card albums and
hat trees.
Mr.. Morgenthau is free to use as
much or as little of this plan as
he sees fit. don't even ask to have
it called the McLemore-M Morgen-
thau plan when it is rushed through
Congress. AS a matter of fact, Id
prefer it weren't.
(Released hY McNaueht Syndicate. IncD