100 years ago in The Saratogian
Monday, June 11, 1917
The news that Saratoga County is “many thousands of dollars” short of its quota of Liberty Bond subscriptions moves banker and politician Edgar T. Brackett to remind Saratogian readers that the “Buying of Liberty Bonds [is the] Duty Of Every American.”
Today’s paper reports that Saratoga Springs has to date pledged $80,000 against an assigned allotment of $921,000. The Liberty Loan bond program raises money for the U.S. war effort through voluntary contributions that will be repaid with interest by the federal government after the war.
Edgar T. Brackett is the president of the Adirondack Trust Company, a leading local laywer, a former state senator and longtime leader of the Saratoga County Republican party organization. He writes to The Saratogian out of a “fear that the situation with respect to the Liberty Loan is not understood by all of our people.”
Brackett explains that the Liberty Loan is the preferable alternative to federal taxation that “might become very burdensome upon all classes of our people, because it might reach to the taking of a very large percentage, if not all, of the income of the people over what may be necessary for their actual food and clothes.”
Some people may not understand that the Liberty Loan is a loan. “The people must awake to the proposition that they are not giving anything to the Government when they buy these bonds. They are simply making a splendid investment that in all the future will return them a small, but a very safe, interest.
“This bond is today the best security in the world. If the time should ever come that the Government defaulted on its obligations no one need be much concerned, because the world cataclysm would be here, when it would make little difference whether any one had property or not. We would be reduced to the elemental and the question whether any one was a debtor or a creditor, would be of no significance.”
Apocalyptic sarcasm aside, Brackett reminds readers that “There is no escape from the payment of the expenses of the conflict. We have the wealth and must use every means necessary to utilize that wealth in the carrying out of the undertaking.
“By wealth I do not mean the possessions of the rich people alone, but the combined assets of the entire people.”
Saratogians of all social classes have a duty to buy bonds, Brackett insists. “No one can honestly say that the poor are called on to furnish the soldiers and that, therefore, the rich must furnish the money necessary to prosecute the war. Each must do both.”