"This was the mechanism. What was the power that actuated the machine to such wonderful effect? 1. salesmanship, including every modern device of advertising; 2. distribution: (a) through retail stores; (b) through employers, by partial payments (usually pay-roll deduction).
"From these simple elements was built up a campaign that induced the people to save in a new and unaccustomed way at least twenty times as much as they had ever before saved in the same time. None of the elements was unimportant, but salesmanship, probably, contributed most. The selling campaigns of the Liberty Loans and War Savings Stamps were carried on by the largest and most effective selling organization ever put together, under the direction of the ablest men in the United States, and with an energy and devotion that were unimaginable. This selling force was irresistible. Everybody bought because everybody was asked, or begged, or told, to buy. Under the same stimulus almost anything would have sold.
"SAVING AT THE SOURCE"
"Next in importance to the direct selling effort came distribution. For the first time in the history of finance it has been made easy to save; for the first time the great retail channels of distribution have been thrown open to saving; for the first time millions of wage-earners have learned the value and ease of 'Saving at the Source' by pay-envelope deduction of a dollar or so a week toward a Liberty Bond."
Mr. Kimball questioned whether or not we are to lose the benefit of the great lesson of thrift and whether some plan could be devised to make us keep on saving. No problem of reconstruction seemed to him more important than this, "yet in no one of the announced conferences on reconstruction do I find mention of it." He then goes on to say:
"The greatest thrift lesson in the world is thrift, no matter what its motive. A great many hundred thousand persons in this country have found themselves this year possessed of $100 or more in one piece for the first time in their lives; often without realization of how they got it. Will that lesson last? Will the wage-earner, now that loan drives are over, keep on saving, going weekly to the bank to put in his dollar. The answer to these questions is, unfortunately, 'no.'
"It would be perfectly possible to continue the issue of War Savings Stamps, and there are many advocates of this plan, but it is doubtful if distribution could be permanently maintained on anything like its present scale. Merchants and banks, with rare exceptions, would scarcely continue to handle them, for the cost is not inconsiderable, and there is no compensating commercial gain. In the postoffices alone their continued sale would set up competition with the present postal savings system, which would serve no good purpose and would be highly confusing.
"Can the savings banks successfully undertake this great task? I believe they could. I believe a national savings bank, operating through commercial banks, stores, and employers all over the United States, making its investments through a small compact, very highly paid and very efficient and very stringently supervised board of executives in one city, supporting a vigorous, numerous, and far-flung selling organization, similar in many respects to the industrial life insurance organizations, could undertake this work and, were it possible to act quickly enough, could keep the thrift movement going without losing the amazing momentum which it has now acquired."
SPENDING THE MONEY
For a period of twenty-five months, from April, 1917, through April, 1919, the United States spent for war purposes more than $1,000,000 an hour. All sorts of comparisons are used to make this figure seizable by the imagination. For example, the whole sum, nearly $22,000,000,000, was twenty times the whole of the pre-war debt. Indeed, it was nearly large enough to pay the entire cost of our Government from 1791 up to the outbreak of the European War. In addition to the actual war cost of our own Government Congress paid to various associated governments the sum of $8,850,000,000. As to how this enormous sum of money was spent, two-thirds of the amount practically was spent upon the Army, and the rate of expenditure for the Army was constantly advancing period by period. Even after the termination of hostilities there was a very high daily average owing to the building of ships for the Emergency Fleet Corporation, the construction and operation of naval vessels, food, clothing, pay and transportation of the Army. The Quartermaster's Department had the largest proportion of expenditure.