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Show RED AUTO'S HOME TOWN MAKES RECORD Oversubscribes the Liberty Loan Quota by Noon the First Day. t If there Is still any one who believes thai the automobile Industry is non-es-seniial so far as the winning of the war ie concerned the unique and enviable record of Lansing, Mich., in the present Liberty loan campaign has a lesson for him. Such, at. any rate, is the belief of E. M. Grady, manager of the Grady Motor company, local Reo distributors, "We of Lansing are proud of the achievement of the Michigan capital, not only for the promptness with whtch its quota was oversubscribed, but more particularly par-ticularly for the way in which it was done. "Lansing's quota was oversubscribed by noon of the opening day of the campaign, cam-paign, and it was all done without solicitationevery solici-tationevery nickel of 'it was subscribed voluntarily. The first two days of the campaign had been set aside as volunteer volun-teer days, and to every one who subscribed sub-scribed during that period was given a tag bearing a letter V. By noon of April fl nearly every one in Lansing was wearing wear-ing a letter V and the few who weren't were feeling mighty uncomfortable. The campaign was over before it started, and It wasn't a campaign at all. It was simply sim-ply a race to see who could offer his . money first. "It seems to me that this accomplishment accomplish-ment is worthy of serious consideration, not only for the lesson it may teach with respect to the handling of future loans, but also because it indicates so clearly, in my opinion, that the greater a community's com-munity's prosperity, the better able it is to contribute freely to the government's needs. "It has been stated occasionally since we got into this war that any industry which did not contribute directly and immediately to the winning of the war was non-essential and should be suspended sus-pended or discontinued. Fortunately, the automobile industry has been able to offer of-fer so many convincing proofs of its wartime war-time importance many automobile plants having been converted, either wholly or in large part, into the manufacture of urgently needed supplies that it ts no longer on the defensive, as it was a year ago "It isn't necessary to defend the automobile auto-mobile industry. The year that has elapsed since our entry into the war has handsomely vindicated the industry itself and the unselfishness and patriotism of the men behind it. "None the less, we are proud of Lansing's Lan-sing's Liberty loan record, not alone because be-cause It shows that Lansing, with its large proportion of German-born citizens, is patriotic to the core, but also because the automobile Industry is responsible for the prosperity that enabled those citizens to translate their patriotism into Liberty Lib-erty loan subscriptions. Without the prosperity they would have been just as patriotic, but "they couldn't have bought bonds." |