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Show Keleased by Western Newspaper Union. Financier of Victory TODAY our newspapers are filled with patriotic appeals through news stories, editorials, cartoons and display advertisements urging us to "Buy Bonds! Buy War Bonds! Buy Victory Bonds!" All of which is nothing new. Financing a war by direct appeal to the individual citizen citi-zen goes back even farther than 1917-18. Back in the days of the Civil war, newspapers carried such items as these: A soldier in -the Army of the Potomac sends to the subscription agent his surplus sur-plus earnings with the remark, "If I fight hard enough, my bonds will be good." Another soldier said, "I am willing to trust Uncle Sam; if he is not good, nobody no-body else is." Besides such "readers" as the above, there were also display ads in the newspapers urging the public to buy bonds. The same message was carried to them in booklets, handbills and posters. And all of this was due mainly to the efforts of a patriotic banker, Jay Cooke. Cooke began work a few hours after he read about the disaster which had befallen General Mac-Dowell's Mac-Dowell's army at Manassas in July, 1861. He sat down, scribbled a few lines on a piece of paper and set out to visit some of his fellow bankers in Philadelphia. Within two hours he had collected more than $2,000,000 to be advanced to the federal fed-eral government in the form of a short term loan. Although most people in the North, when the war began, thought it would be a short one, they were soon disillusioned. They soon realized, too, that it would be a costly one. During its first summer, expenditures expendi-tures rose to $1,000,000 a day. By the end of the year they had mounted mount-ed to a million and a half a day. Upon Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the treasury, fell the burden of providing the money. Congress authorized the treasury to issue three-year notes, bearing 7.3 per cent interest. Accompanied by Cooke, Chase went to New York to raise money upon the security of these notes. But the bankers there were timid about providing the money mon-ey until Chase threatened to flood the country with unsecured paper. Then they agreed to enter a syndicate syndi-cate with bankers in Boston and Philadelphia to advance $50,000,000 to the treasury on the secretary's notes if he would appeal to the public pub-lic to subscribe to them. Cooke was named as one of a corps of 148 agents appointed to handle han-dle the issue of "seven-thirties" (so-called (so-called because they paid $7.30 interest in-terest yearly on $100). The Philadelphia Phila-delphia banker went at it on a big scale. He bought a large amount of advertising space in the newspapers and kept the editors Jiberally supplied sup-plied with "promotional copy." The treasury had allowed him $150 for advertising purposes but he spent many times that amount and paid for it out of his own pocket. When the selling campaign ended it was found that he had sold more than one-fifth of the entire bond issue. The next year the treasury found that it was becoming increasingly difficult to finance the war. Military Mili-tary reverses suffered by the Union armies had shaken the public's faith In the government. Again Cooke was called in. He was placed in charge of a $513,000,000 issue of "five-twenties" (bonds bearing 6 per cent interest and payable after five and in not more than 20 years). It was then that Cooke's genius for publicizing the bond selling cam-, paign proved itself even more than before. This campaign was a success, as were his later campaigns a "ten-forty" "ten-forty" loan of $200,000,000 and a "seven-thirty" loan of $830,000,000. All In all, Cooke was responsible for raising more than $2,000,000,000 to finance the Union victory. As one historian has well said "these were the most remarkable feats of financiering finan-ciering known to history." Methods of selling bonds which may be considered new and original today were used by Cooke in his operations. He devised a "pay roll deduction" plan and more than 1,000 employees of a Philadelphia railroad company subscribed to the bond issue is-sue under this plan. Cooke also persuaded per-suaded many companies which had government contracts to accept bonds in part payment for their services serv-ices and supplies. He enlisted the aid of stage stars to help publicize the bonds and encouraged newspapers newspa-pers to carry "box scores" showing the progress of the campaigns. 1 |