100 YEARS AGO IN THE SARATOGIAN
Friday, April 26, 1918. Today is Liberty Day, an impromptu national holiday dedicated to promoting the sale of Liberty Bonds to help finance the U.S. war against Germany.
The Third Liberty Loan campaign is “somewhat lagging” in its effort to raise $3,000,000,000 nationwide by May 4, according to a wire-service report in today’s Saratogian. Intense publicity efforts today are expected to put the drive past the $2,000,000,000 mark.
In Saratoga Springs bond sales total $457,000 by the end of the day. The city’s goal is $636,500. While the latest numbers are promising, representatives of local banks warn that “many of the subscribers have not yet made any initial payments on the bonds.”
To date, 2,252 Saratogians have purchased or pledged to purchase Liberty Bonds. At a Liberty Loan Committee meeting tonight, plans are made to go door to door next week in an effort to get the rest of the population to do their bit.
The city’s primary school students are doing their bit, having bought $22,500 worth of bonds as of press time for this evening’s paper. They’ve also bought several thousand dollars’ worth of lower-denomination Thrift Stamps.
“A little lady in one of the elementary schools had been asking her mother for weeks if she could not help her to get a Thrift Stamp,” one reporter writes, “The mother was one of the many who nowadays have to count every penny, and she has found herself unable to help until last week, when she gave the youngster twenty-five cents for a stamp.
“When she came home the young lady displayed a Thrift Stamp folder containing four stamps instead of one. The mother said there must be some mistake and so came to ask the teacher about it.
“The teacher replied, ‘No,’ that it was right, and explained that the three stamps had been purchased through money earned, about two cents at a time for running errands. The mother said that was all that the child had for spending money. It had been more fun for her to save these pennies and buy the stamps to help Uncle Sam than to spend them.”
What’s Happening
Francis X. Bushman stars in “The Brass Check” in the cinematic part of the program at the Broadway Theatre tonight. The live vaudeville program includes the Baeder-Lavelle comedy acrobats, the comedians Cain & Hoffman, and Marion Beauclaire & Co.
At the Palace, Vivian Martin stars in “The Fair Barbarian” at a benefit screening for the Young Ladies’ Sodality, while the Lyric program features Gladys Leslie in “Little Miss No-Account” and the final chapter of the serial, “The Hidden Hand.”