$3,000,000,000 had just been authorised. "Why not make this loan the
text of a great National thrift lesson and give every working man and
woman a chance to become a financial partner of the Empire," said the
saving mentors. It was decided to put part of this loan within the range
of everybody, that is, to issue it in denominations from five shilling
scrip pieces up, to sell it through the post office and thus bring the
new savings bank to the very doors of the people.
Again a machine was needed, and once more as in the case of the food
campaign one was well oiled and accessible. It was the organisation that
had raised, by eloquent word and equally stimulating poster and
pamphlet, the great volunteer army of 3,000,000 men. Just as it had
drawn soldiers to the fighting colours, so did it now seek to lure the
savings of the people to the financial standard of the nation.
The Parliamentary Recruiting Committee became the Parliamentary War
Savings Committee and it loosed a campaign of exploitation such as
England had never seen before. From newspapers, bill boards and rostrums
was hurled the injunction to buy the War Loan and help mould the Silver
Bullet that would crush the Germans. It was literally a "popular loan"
in that the five shilling short-term vouchers, bought at the post
office, and which paid 5 per cent, could be exchanged when they had
grown to five pounds for a share of long-term War Stock paying 4½ per
cent. The higher rate of interest was the inducement to begin saving and
it worked like a charm.
Tribute to the efficacy of this programme is the fact that more than
1,000,000 English workers purchased the War Loan. Through this procedure
they learned, what most of them did not know before, that when you put
money out to work it earns more money. It meant that they had become
investors and were starting on the road to independence.
But this campaign, admirable as it was in scope and execution, failed in
its larger purpose of reaching the great mass of the people. While more
than 1,000,000 workers participated in the loan their holdings really
comprised but a small percentage of the immense total. The bulk of the
buying was by banks, corporations, trustees, and wealthy individuals.
The message, therefore, of permanent thrift combined with a more or
less continuous investment opportunity for every man still had to be
delivered. All the while the Empire hungered for money as well as for
men.
Such was the state of affairs when the Chancellor of the Exchequer
appointed the Committee on War Loans for the Small Investor. It had two
definite functions: to raise funds for the national defence and to
provide through the medium selected some simple and accessible means for
the employment of the average man's money.
This Committee recommended that an issue be made of Five Per Cent
Exchequer Bonds in denominations of five, twenty and fifty pounds to be
sold at all post offices. It was an excellent idea and was immediately
authorised by the Treasury. The Exchequer Bond became part of the
swelling flood of British war securities and might have had a
distinction all its own but for the enterprise and sagacity of one man
who happened to be a member of this Committee.
That man was Sir Hedley Le Bas. You must know his story before you can
go into the part that he played in the great drama of British investment
that is now to be unfolded. A generation ago he was the lustiest lad in
Jersey, his birthplace. His feats as swimmer were the talk of a race
inured to the hardships of the sea. After seven years in the Army he
came to London to make his fortune. From an humble clerical position he
rose to be head of one of the great book publishing houses in Great
Britain, employing over 400 salesmen, spending over a quarter of a
million dollars a year in advertising alone.
Sir Hedley is big of bone, dynamic of personality, more like the alert,
wideawake American business man than almost any other individual I have
ever met in England. One day he gave the British publishing business the
jolt of its long and dignified life by taking a whole page in the _Daily
Mail_ to advertise a single book. His colleagues said it was
"unprofessional," that it violated all precedent. Sir Hedley thought to
the contrary and in vindication of his judgment the book developed into
a "best seller." That pioneer page in the _Mail_ was the first of many.
Prior to the outbreak of the present war, Sir Hedley had been consulted
by the then Minister of War as to the most advisable means of getting
recruits.
"Why don't you advertise?" he asked.
"It's never been done before," replied the Minister.
"Then it's high time to begin," said the hard-headed Jerseyman.
His plan scarcely had time to be considered when the Great War broke.
Sir Hedley was made a member of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee
and with Kitchener helped to face England's huge problem of raising a
volunteer army. How was it to be done?
Hardly had the new War Chief warmed the chair in his office down in
Whitehall, than Le Bas came to him with this suggestion: "The quickest
way to raise the new army is to advertise for men."
Kitchener's huge bulk straightened: he looked surprised: the idea seemed
unsoldierly, almost unpatriotic. But he knew Le Bas. After a moment's
hesitancy:
"All right. Go ahead."
Under Le Bas was launched the publicity campaign which no man who
visited England during its progress will ever forget. This galvanic
publisher geared all the Forces of Print up to the idea of selling
Military Service. Instead of books the Merchandise was Men.
The most lureful, colourful and effective posters that artist brain
could possibly conceive flashed from every bill board in the Kingdom. No
one could escape them.
It was Le Bas who created the phrase "Your King and Country Need You"
that went echoing throughout the Kingdom and drew more men to the
colours perhaps than any other plea of the war.
When the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee became the Parliamentary War
Savings Committee, Le Bas went with it. Its first job was to sell the
Great War Loan. The Treasury officials wanted it done in the usual
dignified British way.
At the first meeting of the Committee, Le Bas objected to this
procedure. Early the next morning he went around to the house of
Reginald McKenna, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
"The Chancellor is in his bath," said the footman who opened the door.
"Then I'll wait until he can get a robe on," said Le Bas.
Fifteen minutes later, the man who holds the British purse strings sat
clad in a dressing gown and listened to the suggestion that
revolutionised British methods of financial salesmanship.
"If we want to sell the War Loan, Mr. Chancellor," said Sir Hedley, "we
will have to advertise in a big way. It's a business proposition and we
must adopt business methods."
"It sounds interesting," said the Chancellor. "Come to my office at ten
and we will talk it over."
It was then 8:30 o'clock. By the time he met the Chancellor at the
Treasury he had dictated the whole outline of the advertising campaign.
The scheme was adopted: the Government spent fifty thousand pounds
advertising the loan but it sold every penny of it.
This then was the type of man who had sat in the six meetings of War
Loan for Small Investors and listened to many conventional suggestions.
He instinctively knew that the Five Pound Exchequer Bond was not a
sufficient bait to hook the small savings of the great mass of the
people.
"We've got to make some kind of attractive offer," said Sir Hedley to
himself. "In fact, we must give the investor something for nothing to
make him lend his money to the country. A pound note looks big to the
average Englishman. Why not give him a pound for every fifteen shillings
and sixpence that he will lay aside for the use of the Nation? In other
words, why not make patriotism profitable?"
When he laid this plan before the Committee, it was unanimously
approved. The maxim of "Fifteen and Six for a Pound" was now unfurled to
the breezes and the super-campaign to corral the British penny was on,
under the auspices of the National War Savings Committee which now
superseded all other organisations as the head and front of the National
Thrift idea.
Although he had a strong selling appeal in the fact that he was giving
the small British investor something for nothing, Sir Hedley realised
that his first bid for savings must have the real punch of war in it.
What was it to be?
He thought a moment and then went over to the War Office where Lloyd
George had just succeeded the lamented Kitchener.
"What could a man buy for fifteen and six?" he asked the many-sided
little Welshman who was progressively filling every important job in the
Empire.
"He could buy six trench bombs," was the reply.
"What else?" queried the publisher.
"He could get 124 cartridges or--"
"That's enough!" exclaimed Le Bas. "I've got it!"
Lloyd George looked a little startled, whereupon his visitor remarked:
"You have given me just the thing I wanted. Wait until to-morrow and you
will find out what it is."
The very next day Lloyd George and a great part of the whole British
Nation knew exactly what Sir Hedley got out of his interview with the
War Minister, because the first advertisement announcing the new type of
War Loan read like this:
"ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR CARTRIDGES FOR FIFTEEN AND SIX, AND
YOUR MONEY BACK WITH COMPOUND INTEREST
"Do you know that every 15/6 you put into War Savings Certificates
can purchase 124 rifle cartridges?
"How many Cartridges will you provide for our men at the Front?
"For every 15/6 you put into War Savings Certificates now you will
receive £1 in five years' time. This is equal to compound interest
at the rate of 5.47 per cent.
"Each year your money grows as follows:
In 1 year it becomes 15/9
In 2 years it becomes 16/9
In 3 years it becomes 17/9
In 4 years it becomes 18/9
In 5 years it becomes £1
"If you need it you can withdraw your money at any time, together
with any interest that has accrued."
This advertisement 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 principal 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" nobody 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 succumb 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 Association, 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 Associations sprang into existence, the whole War
Savings Certificates project began to boom and it has boomed ever since.
War Savings Associations are groups of people who may be clerks in the
same office, shop assistants 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 Associations 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 Association 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 Association no member is ordinarily permitted to win
more than one Certificate in a period of thirty-one weeks, except by
special arrangement. Each Association, 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 Association, 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 Associations. 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 Associations, 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
Association 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 space. 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 Associations. 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-buttoned 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
institutions 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' association 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 canvasses 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 principal 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 Association 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
hoardings 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.