100 YEARS AGO IN THE SARATOGIAN
Sunday, June 23, 1918. “It is safe to predict that anyone hearing Attorney William Byrne’s address to the audience assembled at the Methodist church will never again complain because another campaign has been started in Saratoga Springs for the purpose of helping Uncle Sam win the war,” The Saratogian reports.
As it happens, another campaign has been started in Saratoga Springs for the purpose of helping Uncle Sam. The Spa City has a quota of $240,000 to raise by June 28 in the federal government’s War Savings Stamp campaign.
Byrne, an Albany lawyer and orator, speaks at the official kickoff for the local fundraising campaign. Campaign chairman Kathryn Starbuck warns the audience that “it is a physical impossibility for the city to meet the quota unless every wage earner pledges to take out as many stamps as it is possible for each.”
The government expects lower-income Americans to pick up a larger share of the quota than in past stamp or bond drives. Individuals can spend no more than $1,000 on stamps, meaning that more people will have to buy them in order to meet the quota.
“It is the desire of the government that the poor man be given an opportunity to help support the war and so these war savings stamps of twenty-five cents each were planned,” Starbuck explains.
Byrne reminds the gathering that “The United States has declared that democracy shall not perish from the earth; that man shall forever have the right to go out upon the highways and the byways of the earth; that man shall do whatever we determine shall be the will of free men.”
The speaker criticizes civilians for “complaining all the time. We’re complaining first because it’s cold, and then because it’s hot; and we complain because of the lack of food, and others complain because there is too much of some food … yes, we’re always complaining and it’s high time that we realize that the time for complaining is passed.
“Ah, my friends, what need is there for us to complain, we have not yet begun to sacrifice as they are sacrificing who, ‘over there,’ are carrying our flag to victory.
“Unless we can stand shoulder to shoulder with our boys in the front lines and know and see and feel and hear the awful horror of this bloodiest murder, we cannot know what real sacrifice and real unselfishness means.”
Byrne calls on Saratogians to send the troops the message that “we are standing back of them with every ounce of our energy, every dollar in our purse, and with our life if need be.”