THIS DAY IN 1917 IN THE RECORD
Friday, June 15, 1917. “The marvelous response of the American people to the Liberty loan is democracy’s answer to the challenge of autocracy,” The Record proclaims on today’s editorial page. Troy’s answer to that challenge, however, is not so resounding. Today is the final day of a nationwide campaign to raise $2,000,000,000 for the U.S. war effort through the sale of Liberty Bonds, which can be redeemed with interest after the war is over. The U.S. declared war on Germany, an “autocracy” under the rule of Kaiser Wilhelm II, on April 6. Liberty Loan organizers announce early this morning that they’ve met the national goal and may make additional bonds available to meet the high demand across the country. Organizers in Troy believe that this early announcement hurt the city’s chances to meet its goal before today’s noon deadline. The city’s final total of $3,074,050 in Liberty Bond sales is “about three-fourths of the amount allotted to be raised in the city,” our reporter explains. Surrounding communities fared better. Albany, Cohoes and Hoosick Falls surpassed their goals. Always determined to one-up Albany somehow, the Troy paper’s reporters emphasize that the capital city’s total “does not represent as large a percentage of the total bank deposits as does” Troy’s total. Despite grumbling that “the amount allotted to this city was out of proportion to its size,” local organizers “claim to be pleased with the response of the city in taking Liberty Bonds.”
Most Liberty Bond sales were in smaller denominations. To our reporter, that suggests that working-class and middle-class Trojans gave more of their comparatively limited resources than their wealthier neighbors.
“There are those who believe that the wealthy persons of the city – and it is pointed out that there are many of them – did not subscribe for nearly as much as was expected of them,” our writer notes.
At the same time, bond saleswomen organized by the National League for Woman’s Service “in instance after instance went into the factories and the shops and stores and canvassed almost every individual therein. They approached more particularly the small wage-earners.
“The results of their work spurred them on. They experienced case after case where they obtained much more than they expected. The patriotism of the small wage-earner, the person who bought a bond knowing that he or she or perhaps the whole family would have to go without something to pay for it, was in many cases inspiring and remarkable.”
In our editors’ opinion, working-class enthusiasm for Liberty Bonds refutes the German propaganda claim that “the rank and file of the nation disapproved” of “Wall Street’s war.”