The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1945-05-11
Seventh War Loan Drive

The 7th War Loan Drive opens Monday and Jackson
eountyis quota is 81, 253.000 in "E" Bonds to be sold during
the seven.week drive, almost double the amount of former
quotas, and it is going to take a lot of selling and a lot OF
buying to reach and pass that quota.
We have sold bonds in a thousand different ways In this
country, with ralys, concerts, raffles, grooming, dancing, movie
stars, auctions, kissing; and also by many other ways more
sedate, but hardly more effective. But the best salesman OF
all is the cold, impersonal logic of arithmetic; and the rock
bottom strata of common sense that underlies so much Of
our national hullabaloo and horse-play. 1t doesn't take a
crooner or a movie star to bring home the fact that a man
who doesn't save when he is making money lives to regret 1t
when times change. ALI of us know this, and most OF us act
upon the knowledge. Yet there are many-we all know their
stories-who live to see the day when the seat OF their
britches are worn thin, and all they can do about it then is
to sit around talking of the days when money was rolling in.
We may trust to the government to assure good times,
and fulfill campaign promises OF ~60,000O00 jobs, or to head
off any incipient depression if one should ever get started; but
we can take the matter to a great extent in our own hands
to- head off our own individual depressions by making in
vestments in War Bonds that will return four dollars for
every three in those not so distant years when, for most of
us, the grey hairs will be ~thickening and the vigor of man.
hood will be receding into the past.
The 7h War Loan drive is on, and now is the time to
buy both for reasons of personal common sense, and also as
a mass demonstration to sustain the u. S. Treasury in its
broad operations and to show our determination to drive on
with the obligations OF war until our armies in the Pacific
have been backed to victory. Our boys are just half through
with their fighting. Until the last shot is fired and the last man
home, we civilians are not even partly through with our home
front obligations. Patriotism should be enough to make us
realize this; but there is an equal amount OF logic in the view.
The greatest and most destructive initiation came to us AFTER
the Armistice in the last war. The German economy Through
government calculation as a cheap way to pay off o~bligations)
scared to such fantastic initiation heights AFTER the war
that it literally took a wheelbarrow full of marks to buy a
pair of shoes.
Initiation takes place when there is too much loose money
lying around, and not enough goods in the open civilian
market to meet the demand, This starts the fantastic bidding
that sees prices of trinkets and trash go to absurd heights,
and the prices of meat, gasoline, and other legitimate useful
articles soar on the black market There is a lot of loose
cash hanging around today, and there will be few extra civil
ian goods manufactured for months to come. Even when it
starts, it will be a trickle. The man who holds his cash in his
hand to get in there bidding for the first few items, instead
of investing it in solid War Bonds which can be many times
more useful when prices return to normal, is just finding an
indirect way to drive up prices and cheaper his own money
He IS stepping up and of his own free will writing his name
IN big clear letters on a sucker list.