"If you need it you can withdraw your money at any time, together with any interest that has accrued."
This advertis.e.m.e.nt made a good many people sit up because it brought home for the first time one concrete use of the money absorbed in war loans.
The National War Savings Committee had two things to sell. One was the Five Per Cent Exchequer Bond: the other was the new Fifteen and Six War Savings Certificate. The promoters were quick to see that while the Exchequer Bond was very desirable, the princ.i.p.al effort must be concentrated on the War Savings Certificate for which the widest appeal and the best selling talk could be made.
That it was a good "buy" n.o.body could deny. It was the obligation of the British Government: it was free from Income Tax: it could be cashed in at any time at a profit: and it made the owner part and parcel of the financing of the war. Every post office and nearly every bank became a selling agent. In short, it was a simple, cheap and worth-while investment absolutely within the scope of every one.
At the outset the sale was restricted to those whose income did not exceed $1,500, the purpose being to keep the investment among the wage earners. So many munition workers were receiving such large incomes that this ban was removed. The only limitation imposed was that no individual could hold more than 500 Certificates. This did not prevent the various members of a family, for example, from each acquiring the full limit.
Having decided to make the War Savings Certificate its prize commodity, the Committee proceeded to launch a spectacular, even sensational promotion campaign. J. Rufus Wallingford in his palmiest days was never more persuasive than the literature which now fairly flooded Great Britain.
The phrase "Your King and Country Need You" that had stirred the recruiting fever now had a full mate in the slogan "Saving for Victory"
which began to loosen pounds and pence from their hiding places. The injunction that went forth everywhere was
"WORK HARD: SPEND LITTLE: SAVE MUCH"
From every bill board and every newspaper were emblazoned:
"SIX REASONS WHY _YOU_ SHOULD SAVE"
Here are the reasons:
1. Because when you save you help our soldiers and sailors to win the war.
2. Because when you spend on things you do not need you help the Germans.
3. Because when you spend you make other people work for you, and the work of every one is wanted now to help our fighting men, or to produce necessaries, or to make goods for export.
4. Because by going without things and confining your spending to necessaries you relieve the strain on our ships and docks and railways and make transport cheaper and quicker.
5. Because when you spend you make things dearer for every one, especially for those who are poorer than you.
6. Because every shilling saved helps twice, first when you don"t spend it and again when you lend it to the Nation.
The word "Save" which had dropped out of the British vocabulary suddenly came back. It was dramatised in every possible way and it became part of a new gospel that vied with the war spirit itself.
The National War Savings Committee became a centre of activity whose long arms reached to every point of the Kingdom. Branch organisations were perfected in every village, town and county: the Admiralty and the War Office were enlisted: through the Board of Education every school teacher became an advance agent of thrift: the Church preached economy with the Scripture: in a word, no agency was overlooked.
The sale of Certificates started off fairly well. On the first day more than 2,000 were sold and the number steadily increased. But while many individuals rallied to the cause, there was not sufficient team work.
One serious obstacle stood in the way. While fifteen shillings and a sixpence is a comparatively small sum to a man who makes a good income, it looms large to the wage earner, especially when it has to be "put by"
and then goes out of sight for four or five years. So the National War Savings Committee set about establishing some means by which the average man or woman could start his or her investment with a sixpence, that is, twelve cents. Even here there was a difficulty. Millions of people in England could save a sixpence a week, but the chances are that before they piled up the necessary fifteen and six to buy the first Certificate they would succ.u.mb to temptation and spend it.
The English small investor, like his brother nearly everywhere, is a person who needs a good deal of urging or the power of immediate example about him. Thereupon the Committee said: "What seems impossible for the individual, may be possible for a group."
Thus was born the idea of the War Savings a.s.sociation, planned to enable a group of people to get together for collective saving and co-operative investment. This proved to be one of the master strokes of the campaign.
From the moment these a.s.sociations sprang into existence, the whole War Savings Certificates project began to boom and it has boomed ever since.
War Savings a.s.sociations are groups of people who may be clerks in the same office, shop a.s.sistants in the same establishments, workers in the same factory or warehouse, people attending the same place of worship, residents in any well-defined locality such as a village or ward of a town, members of a club, the servants in a household: in short, any number of people who are willing to work together. Some have been started with 10 members, others with as many as 500. Up to the first of January nearly 10,000 of these a.s.sociations had been formed throughout the Kingdom.
Now came the inspiration that was little short of genius for it enabled the lowliest worker who could only set aside a sixpence a week to become an intimate part of the great British Saving and Investment Scheme. The idea was this:
If one man saves sixpence a week, it would take him thirty-one weeks to get a One Pound War Certificate. But if thirty-one people each save sixpence a week, they can buy a Certificate at once and keep on buying one every week. Thus their savings begin to earn interest immediately.
Thus every War Savings a.s.sociation became a co-operative saving and investment syndicate--a pool of profit.
How are the Certificates distributed? The usual procedure is to draw lots. In a small a.s.sociation no member is ordinarily permitted to win more than one Certificate in a period of thirty-one weeks, except by special arrangement. Each a.s.sociation, however, can make its own allotment rules. The value of winning a Certificate the first week is that the winner"s 15/6 will have grown to one pound in four years and a half instead of five. This is broadly the financial advantage gained by being a member of an a.s.sociation, although the larger reason is that it is more or less compulsory as well as co-operative saving.
Britain is buzzing with these War Savings a.s.sociations. You find them in the mobilisation camps, on the training ships, on the grim grey fighters of the Grand Fleet, even in the trenches up against the battle line. The London telephone girls have their own organisation: sales forces of large commercial houses are grouped in thrift units: there are saving battalions in most of the munition works, and so it goes. In many of the big mercantile establishments that have a.s.sociations, the weekly drawings of Certificates with all their elements of chance and profits are exciting events.
Many Britishers shy at co-operation. For example, they like to save "on their own." To meet this desire, the War Savings Committee devised an individual saving and investment plan which begins with a penny, that is two cents. Any person can go to the Treasurer of a War Savings a.s.sociation and get a blank stamp book. Each penny that he deposits is marked with a lead pencil cross in a blank square. When six of these marks are recorded, a sixpenny stamp is pasted on the blank s.p.a.ce. As soon as the book contains thirty-one stamps it is exchanged for a War Savings Certificate.
Still another plan has been devised to meet requirements of people who do not care to affiliate with the War Savings a.s.sociations. Any post office will issue a stamp book in which ordinary sixpenny postage stamps can be pasted. When thirty-one have been affixed they may be exchanged at the post office for a pound Savings Certificate. These books have this striking inscription on their cover: "Save your Silver and it will turn into Gold! 15/6 now means a sovereign five years hence."
The whole Savings Campaign is studded with picturesque little lessons in thrift. The London costers--the pearl-b.u.t.toned men who drive the little donkey carts--subscribed to $1,000 worth of Certificates in a single week, although they had made a previous investment of $4,000.
In hundreds of factories the idea has taken root. In some of them War Savings subscriptions are obtained by means of deductions from wages.
Employees can sign an authorisation for a certain amount to be taken each week or month out of their wages. They get accustomed to having two, three, four or five shillings lifted out of their wages and thus their saving becomes automatic.
Often the employer helps the movement by contributing either the first or last sixpence of each Certificate or offering Certificates as bonuses for good conduct or extra work. When one small employer that I heard of pays his men their War Bonus, he gets them, if they are willing, to place two sixpenny stamps on a stamp card, for which he deducts tenpence. The employees are thus given twopence for every shilling they save. When these cards bear stamps up to the value of 15/6 they are exchanged for War Savings Certificates.
No field has been more fruitful than the public schools where the thrift seed has been planted early. In hundreds of public educational inst.i.tutions Savings Clubs have been formed to buy Certificates. In Huntingdonshire, where there were less than 150 pupils, more than $35.00 was subscribed in a single morning. At Grimsby a successful trawler owner gave $5,000 to the local teachers" a.s.sociation to help the War Savings crusade. A shilling has been placed to the credit of every child who undertakes to save up for a War Savings Certificate, the child"s payments being made in any sum from a penny up. Ninety-five per cent of the children in the town have begun to save. Similarly, a councillor of Colwyn Bay has offered to pay one shilling on each Certificate bought by the scholars of one of the town"s schools, and also offered to add fifty per cent to all sums paid into the school savings bank during one particular week, provided that the money was used to purchase War Savings Certificates.
Almost countless schemes have been devised to instil, encourage and develop the thrift idea. In certain districts, patriotic women make house to house canva.s.ses to collect the instalments for the Certificates. They become living Thrift Reminders. Tenants of model flats and dwelling houses pay weekly or monthly War Savings Certificates at the same time they pay their rent.
That this economy and savings idea has gone home to high and low was proved by an incident that happened while I was in London. A man appeared before a certain well-known judge to ask for payment out of a sum of money that stood to his credit for compensation to "buy clothes."
The judge reprimanded him sharply, saying, "Are you not aware that one of the princ.i.p.al War Don"ts is, "Don"t buy clothes: wear your old ones."" With this he held up his own sleeve which showed considerable signs of wear. Then he added: "If I can afford to wear old garments, you can. Your application is dismissed."
With saving has come a spirit of sacrifice as this incident shows: A London household comprising father, mother and two children moved into a smaller house, thus saving fifty dollars a year. By becoming teetotalers they saved another five shillings (one dollar and a quarter) and on clothes the same weekly sum. They took no holiday this summer: ate meat only three times a week, abstained from sugar in their tea, cut down short tramway rides, and the father reduced his smoking allowance. By these means they have been able to buy a War Savings Certificate every week.
Just as no sum has been too small to save, so is no act too trivial to achieve some kind of conservation. People are urged to carry home their bundles from shops. This means saving time and labour in delivery and permits the automobile or wagon to be used in more important work. I could cite many other instances of this kind.
Even the children think and write in terms of economy. At the annual meeting of the British a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science held last summer at Newcastle, an eminent doctor read a paper on "London Children"s Ideas of How to Help the War." The replies to his questions, which were sent to more than a thousand families, all indicated that the juvenile mind was thoroughly soaked with the savings idea. Some of the answers that he quoted were very humorous. A boy in Kensington gave the following reasons:
"Eat less and the soldiers get more: If you make a silly mistake in your arithmetic tell your mother not to let you have any jam, and put the money saved in the War Loan: Stop climbing lamp-posts and save your clothes: Don"t wear out your boots by striking sparks on the kerbstones: If you buy a pair of boots you are a traitor to your country, because the man who makes them may keep a soldier waiting for his: Don"t use so much soap: Don"t buy German-made toys."
The net result of this mobilisation of the forces of thrift is that up to January the first 50,000,000 War Certificates had been sold, representing an investment of nearly 40,000,000 pounds or approximately $200,000,000. The striking feature about this large sum is that it was reared with the coppers of working men and women. "Serve by Saving" in England has become more than a phrase.
All this was not achieved, however, without the most persistent publicity. England to-day is almost one continuous bill board. The h.o.a.rdings which blazed with the appeal for recruits and the War Loan now proclaim in word and picture the virtues of saving and the value of the now familiar War Certificates. Likewise they embody a spectacular lesson in thrift for everybody.
One of the most effective posters is headed "ARE YOU HELPING THE GERMANS?" Under this caption is the subscription:
"You are helping the Germans when you use a motor car for pleasure: when you buy extravagant clothes: when you employ more servants than you need: when you waste coal, electric light or gas: when you eat and drink more than is necessary to your health and efficiency.