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WHY YOU ARE ASKED TO BUY

By Henry Morgenthau, Jr.,
Secretary of the Treasury

Defense Savings Bonds and Stamps are not for the few; they are for the many. They are for the great mass of the people, for the laboring man, the skilled mechanic, the office worker, the employer, the housewife, the retired businessman--even children can save their pennies to buy the stamps exchangeable for Defense Savings Bonds.

Your Government wants to give every one of you a chance to have a financial stake in American Democracy; an opportunity to contribute toward the defense of that democracy and the right to say to yourself, "I am doing something to help."

Secondly, your Government wants to encourage the habit of thrift in all the people; to prevent a spending spree of the kind that accompanied the last war; to provide a check against high prices; to safeguard and stabilize the current American standard of living.

Finally, your Government wants to provide each of you with a cushion against the post-war period when, inevitably, adjustments of employment will have to be made. Your Government wants every American family to face this postwar adjustment period with savings protected and guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America.

SOME TELL-TALE FIGURES

By Daniel W. Bell, Under Secretary of the Treasury

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The Secretary estimated that expenditures for the fiscal year 1942 would not be less than 19 billion dollars, and that revenue under the present tax laws would reach 9.2 billion dollars. If, therefore, taxes are to be twothirds of expenditures during the next fiscal year, we must have tax revenues amounting to 12.7 billion dollars, or roughly 3.5 billion dollars more than we expect to collect under the present tax structure. It is for this reason that the Secretary has asked Congress for a 3.5 billion dollar increase in taxes.

But even if taxes are raised 3.5 billion dollars, we shall still have to borrow a substantial amount. Of the 3.5 billion dollars of additional annual tax liabilities contemplated under the Treasury's proposed tax program, the Treasury will receive during the next fiscal year not more than 2.6 billion dollars. Therefore, with expenditures of 19 billion dollars and revenues, including the new taxes, at 11.8 billion dollars, we will still have a deficit of 7.2 billion dollars.

Government trust funds, including Social Security funds, are expected to purchase from the Treasury about 1.5 billion dollars of Government securities during the next fiscal year. This leaves 5.7 billion dollars to be raised from our Defense Savings Bonds program and our regular market operations. In addition to this, Government corporations and credit agencies will probably borrow in the shortterm market around one billion dollars.

"AS INDESTRUCTIBLE AS THE HARDNESS OF DIAMONDS"

By Harold N. Graves, Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury

Through their representatives in Congress, the people vote the taxes. As individual citizens, they will make up their minds to contribute still more to defense funds, and to their own, personal futures, too.

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For the Savings Bonds will pay for National Defense today and when their value, plus interest, is returned to you, they will pay for those things that you want to do and we all want to do in our world of tomorrow.

Our pocketbooks are all sizes, and the Defense Bonds now being offered by the Treasury are all sizes, too. There are thousands among you who have already bought your first Defense Savings Bonds or your first Defense Savings Stamps.

Some of you know perhaps better than I can tell you what the securities are.

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them.

The $18.75 bond will be worth $25.00, and the $750 bond will be worth $1,000.

The F and G bonds are meant for habitual investors; the E bond is the people's bond. You may buy E bonds for yourself; if you are married, you may buy them in the name and on behalf of husband, or wife, or for both of you at once; you may buy for son or daughter. Right now, Defense Savings Bonds will buy guns, planes, and tanks. Tomorrow, they may buy a new set of screens for the house, or a college education.

If you are among those who cannot afford to buy a Savings Bond out of a single pay check, then Savings Stamps are within your reach. These are sold in the same places as bonds that is, in banks and at post offices, and they come in denominations of from 10 cents to $5.

They do not earn interest; but each stamp buyer receives an album in which he can save his stamps, and when he has accumulated enough of them, he can exchange them for an interestbearing bond.

The dollar value of Defense Savings Bonds is as indestructible as the hardness of diamonds. Only the Government can sell them, and only the Government can buy them back. They cannot be traded in on the exchanges, and they cannot be swapped; they cannot be beaten down in value, nor pushed up in price except through the normal accumulation of interest.

Subject to the single restriction that you cannot return bonds sooner than 60 days after the first day of the month you bought them, the Treasury always will pay you at least what you paid for the bonds. And the longer you keep the bonds the more their value will rise.

A CUSHION AGAINST FUTURE TROUBLES

By Emil Schram, Chairman, Board of Directors, Reconstruction Finance Corporation

The Treasury Department's Defense Savings Program has been designed to forestall just such a wild spending spree by the millions who now have new jobs or jobs at higher pay. Of course, you have a perfect right to spend your money as you see fit. Your Government does not intend to embark upon any plan of highhanded appropriation of your personal funds. But this program has been designed to slice the peak off our national income and to tempt those extra dollars into a savings reservoir.

Every bond or every stamp that you buy will reduce purchasing power by just that amount and will relieve the pressure upon industry by just that much. The immediate effect will be to stabilize present costs and to apply brakes to rising prices.

And the effect on the future security of this great Nation is equally as important. Every dollar which the Treasury succeeds in diverting into this purchasing reserve will build for this country a backlog of purchasing power which may prove to be our economic sal

vation in future years. Some day we shall awaken to find the war clouds dissipated.

When that happens, the expenditures for defense will cease and we shall be confronted with a serious problem of readjustment. Unemployment is bound to rise and new economic solutions will have to be discovered.

The dollars which you set aside today may well serve to tide you over a period of unemployment. This reserve of purchasing power may play a vital part in keeping our industrial wheels humming during the later period of readjustment.

In other words, we are building for ourselves a cushion against future economic impacts. Had such a plan been inaugurated during the twenties when cash was so plentiful on all sides, many of us might have been spared the want and deprivations of the past decade.

In this hour of great emergency, it is deeply patriotic to invest your earnings in America's future.

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WHAT ARE WE ASKED TO DO?

By Hendrik Willem Van Loon, Historian

Jan Paderewski spoke unto you last week. This evening he is succeeded by one who also hails from a country where cruelty and cunning, mixed with perjury and falsehood, have destroyed a civilization which, in proportion to its size, had quite generously contributed to that sum total of that human happiness which comes from the victory of freedom over slavery both in a physical and spiritual way.

What are you asked to do? You are urged to invest your spare cash in United States bonds. That expression however is slightly misleading. What you are asked to do is to invest your spare money in your own future and that of your children.

For we are - all of us partners in the firm of the United States of America, established a little over a century and a half ago to promote well-being among our people on a basis of freedom and independence.

We also, according to the prospectus of the founders of this commonwealth, hoped to conduct our affairs in such a manner that we would not only gain but continue to enjoy the decent respect of all mankind.

My profession is that of an historian. I am not an aviator and knowing nothing about aviation, I have of course always most carefully refrained from telling my fellow citizens how they should run their flying machines or arrange their flying fields. But being an historian I was at the same time somewhat of a social diagnostician and I have done what was my duty as a social diagnostician.

And so now that I have once more a chance to speak out what is so heavily in my heart and on my mind, I will tell you how I see the

situation. What we call a war is not really a war but a revolution.

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as has been

What we call a world war is in reality a world-wide revolution. That revolution all revolutions always have been brought about by a large number of causes, most of which are so distantly related to each other that only an expert will be able to see how they could possibly be connected.

But by now it must have begun to dawn upon even the most pathetic victim of willful factblindness that this terrific revolution which is going on in this world at the present moment has spread to practically every part of the planet and as a result thereof the greater part of our unfortunate vale of tears is on fire that vast regions have already been completely devastated and that millions of people are today living in such abject misery that they feel sincerely happy for those among their neighbors who were saved their own endless miseries by the fact that they were killed outright during the first attack.

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Do we want to keep our heritage safe from the polluting touch of those who would like to deprive us of our physical treasures and our spiritual treasures or do we intend to let our desire for comfort and ease and our insistence upon closing our eyes to disturbing facts do we intend to let this blind us to the menace which threatens our safety and our glorious experiment in personal and collective freedom?

The American people since the beginning of time have always been conscious of being the keepers of their own souls. In the end, our souls will tell us what to do. Buy bonds

buy safety for yourselves and your children!

SALES OF INDEPENDENT RETAILERS ADVANCE 23 PERCENT

Sales of independent retailers advanced 23 percent in April 1941 over the same month of 1940, according to the Director of the Census. This figure is based upon reports from 23,392 firms in most kinds of business except department stores.

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For the year to date 4 months sales were 16 percent higher than for the same 4 months of 1940. In 543 department stores, sales were 24 percent higher for April and 13 percent higher for the year to date than for the same periods of 1940.

For all kinds of business combined, the increase over April 1940 was 24 percent. This is the 29th consecutive month in which retail sales, reported by this series, have exceeded those in the corresponding month of the year earlier. For the year to date, sales were 15 percent over the first 4 months of 1940.

The gain in April sales, partly due to the changing date of Easter, is the largest recorded by this series in the 5 years since its inception. The increase for the year to date rose from 12 percent for the first quarter to 15 percent for the first 4 months of 1941. The 11 percent increase from March to April exceeds the seasonal gain usually exhibited between these months.

Florists led all other kinds of business with a gain of 58 percent over April 1940. The three trades next in order of sales rises were retailers of apparel: men's clothing and furnishings stores (48 percent), family clothing stores (46 percent), and shoe stores (46 percent).

While apparel sales overshadowed durable consumers' goods this month, these lines continued at a high sales level, in most cases recording gains above those in earlier months of 1941. Drug store sales were up 11 percent and experiences of eating and drinking places were 12 percent above April 1940.

Food stores reported the smallest increase

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in dollar sales from comparable periods of the preceding year. All trades indicated stronger gains this month than those noted for March. For the year to date 4 months motorvehicle dealers were the leaders in sales gains, with an increase of 32 percent over the first 4 months of 1940. Motor-vehicle dealers were followed in order by jewelry stores, lumber-building materials dealers, furniture stores and household appliance dealers.

While the most pronounced gains were for retailers of durable consumers' goods, all kinds of business reported sales above those of the previous year.

Gains in sales were shown in all population groups as compared with a year ago. The patterns for April and for the year to date reflect more accelerated sales gains in the larger cities. Cities of over 25,000 population reported sales expansions of 25 percent or more in April.

For the year to date, cities of 50,000 to 100,000 population again had the most favorable record for any city-size grouping. Retail trade increased least in places of less than 2,500 population.

Increases in sales for the month ranging from 7 percent to 36 percent were shown for the 34 States. Six States reported sales 30 percent or more above April 1940. These were Washington (36 percent), Connecticut (34 percent), Ohio (32 percent), Pennsylvania (31 percent), South Carolina (30 percent) and Indiana (30 percent). Fourteen additional States recorded increases of 20-30 percent. As a group, the Pacific States enjoyed the strongest upswing.

The Mountain States continued to show the least effect of increased trade. For the year to date, 24 of the 34 States covered experienced business at least 10 percent more active than during 1940.

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